Anabasis
by jazzpha
Summary: Slight AU. Freshly returned from the Wutai War, Sephiroth is sent back there once again to retrieve Aeris, who's escaped from Shinra's labs. But what if he'd rather keep her out of Shinra's hands? And what of Jenova's legacy? Aeris/Sephiroth, Cloud/Tifa
1. Bloodhound

**Anabasis**

**Chapter 1:** Bloodhound

* * *

"You called, Mr. President?"

The voice was calm, quiet and composed, but it still managed to force the old Shinra to hold back a shiver. Rufus watched his father sidelong from his position in the corner of the room and smirked; it was always fun watching the old man quake underneath his fat.

"Yes, I did, Sephiroth," the elder Shinra replied easily, after he'd regained his composure without missing a beat. "I know you just got back from the campaign in Wutai, but I'm afraid you're not going to be able to enjoy that much furlough time after all. We just got a lead on a stolen item of ours that went cold a few years back, while you were still out west. I need you to get it back for me, soldier."

"And where exactly does the lead point, Mr. President?" the SOLDIER asked, assuming from the older man's recalcitrance that he wouldn't like the answer. Sephiroth's suspicion was proven right a few moments later as Rufus picked up his father's slack, stepping out more fully into the light.

"Right back into the heart of Wutai, Sephiroth," he explained, carefully studying the SOLDIER's face for a reaction and failing to find one. "Word is, some black marketers picked up the item in question after it escaped from Professor Hojo's laboratory. One of my sleeper Turks just informed me that it was last seen on the outskirts of Wutai, heading towards the center along with the merchants."

Sephiroth's heart rate jumped slightly as he heard Hojo's name mentioned, but he forced it back down and willed his expression to remain stoic.

"An escaped experiment?" he asked. "That's interesting indeed; does it have a number?"

"C-54AR1," Rufus replied, a curious edge to his voice. "Why do you ask?"

The SOLDIER barely kept his eyes from widening at the influx of memories that came rushing back to him along with the mention of that all-too-familiar serial number, closing the eerily green orbs slowly and shrugging.

"No reason," he answered, quietly drawing in a calming breath before opening his eyes once again and continuing.

"Am I to assume I'm going in under deep cover, Sir?"

Rufus nodded, his disgruntled father now relegated completely to the sidelines.

"Quite so, Sephiroth. No Materia, no Masamune, and nothing else that could give you away. Use guns or a normal _katana_ if you must, but for obvious reasons we'd prefer if this exchange was solved without bloodshed."

"Understandable," the SOLDIER replied levelly. "Regrettable, but wholly understandable."

"I'm glad to hear that," Rufus replied with a slanted smirk. "As profitable as war can be, General, peace is much more lucrative."

Sephiroth simply nodded; the part of him that was put off by Rufus' blatant amorality was overruled by his deeply-rooted psychological detachment that came with being trained as a First-Class SOLDIER. Psychological detachment that he would need every ounce of if he wanted to complete this mission successfully and without incident, considering what the objective was.

Or, more accurately, considering _who_ the objective was.

C-54AR1, otherwise known as Aeris Gainsborough. The last of the Cetra, and the girl who had been locked in the cell across from Sephiroth's in Hojo's fetid laboratory for years. But then his training as a killing machine had begun, and he was taken away from the emotionally suffocating lab and thrown into an emotionally suffocating battlefield. He hadn't seen her in years, and all of a sudden she had just waltzed back into his life. How typical.

He could only hope that whatever Hojo had done to her wasn't as scarring as what the insane bastard had done to him.

Dragging himself out of his thoughts, Sephiroth saluted his superiors, turned on his heels and walked out of the room without another word. As soon as he'd left, the President sighed and shifted his attention to his son.

"The arrangements with that bastard Godo are finalized, Rufus," he said gravely as he lit up a cigar, taking in a slow drag. "I'm counting on your Turks to finalize the hit once he's far enough into enemy territory. Make sure they don't fail."

Rufus' hard eyes flared at the veiled accusation

"They never have, Mr. President."

The elder Shinra was decidedly unmoved by his son's calm reply.

"There's a first time for everything, boy," he shot back, "and if anyone is an expert at breaking with trends, it's Sephiroth."

Rufus simply nodded and remained silent, inwardly dumbfounded by the blind stupidity of his father's paranoia. It was true that soldiers who were forced to re-adapt to society in peacetime were more prone to mutinous behavior or disorderly conduct, but the President's idea that Sephiroth presented a threat that needed to be put down was simply absurd. If anything, attacking the preeminent SOLDIER would only provoke the warrior's anger.

And yet such a situation would work quite nicely in his favor, Rufus had realized, and so he was content to let things play out for now. He had waited years to make his move, after all; what were a few more weeks?

* * *

Sephiroth had felt a prick of annoyance when the President had told him about the assignment, but it had been quickly overruled. First, by the realization that he would be bored out of his skull sitting around doing nothing, and second when he'd heard that the 'item' in question was in fact Aeris. But as he sat on the deck of a boat bound for Wutai, a heavy cloak covering his features and feeling oddly disarmed with a normal _katana_ by his side, another problem floated up into the forefront of Sephiroth's mind.

Once he'd negotiated to get Aeris back from whichever scum had picked her up in the first place, what was he going to do with her? Clearly, bringing her back to Shinra and Hojo was out of the question; he could only imagine what horrors the mad scientist had visited upon the Cetra after he had been forced to abandon her for military training. He had usually traded a longer turn under the knife for a reduction in Aeris' turn, but even then Hojo had made up for the loss by making his time spent with Aeris all that much more intensive. Without him there to bargain, though, it went without saying that Hojo would have made Aeris' life a living hell.

But regardless, the SOLDIER told himself as he forced the ghosts of Aeris' screams out of his head, those times were long behind him; dredging them up now did no one any good. And neither did letting himself get emotional, for that matter. In the end, if he refused to bring Aeris back to the Shinra they would come and take her by force. And even as talented of a warrior as he was, Sephiroth had no illusions about the fact that Shinra could find a way to kill him if they felt there was no other choice.

So, the SOLDIER decided as he closed his eyes and attempted to drift off to sleep, he would find her, re-acquire her and return her to Shinra. At least that way, her trauma would be kept at as minimal a level as possible.

_Until Hojo gets her hands on her again_, his last remaining sliver of conscience spat back at him. _Gaia knows he's going to want to make up for lost time. How many organs do you think he'll harvest from her living body before she succumbs to the pain and dies, Sephiroth? Cetra have quite the endurance, you know._

Sephiroth squinted his eyes shut against the condemnation, retreating back deep into the emotional limbo he'd been taught to create as a member of SOLDIER. Here, there was no pain. No suffering, no conscience, no qualms, no memories and no scruples. There was only the mission, the directives it entailed and the ultimate objective. It was in this limbo that Sephiroth thrived, even as he felt his heart wither beneath his armor. But a SOLDIER, as his friend Angeal had told him once, had no place for a heart anyway.

Perhaps once he handed her back over to Shinra, the last shred of his nagging sense of right and wrong would finally disappear for good.

_Yeah, go ahead and see how that works out for you,_ the voice of his conscience parried faintly through the barrier of Sephiroth's denial, before falling silent— for the moment, at least. The SOLDIER allowed his thoughts to become preoccupied with the particulars of the mission rather than the end result, focusing on the tedium of the specifics long enough that he was lulled into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

That respite didn't last long at all, though, as the chattering voices of excited passengers dragged Sephiroth out of his mental refuge at the crack of dawn a few hours later. He supposed that it was what he deserved for sleeping out on the deck, but it was still a hard struggle to keep from drawing the pistol at his waist and sending all of these idiots right into the Lifestream.

"I wonder what it's gonna look like now, being a tourist attraction and all," one of the civilian passengers mused. "Hopefully I can see some of the temples before those brutish SOLDIERs show up and stomp all over them for kicks."

"Dear, don't say that so loudly!" a woman replied harshly, whom Sephiroth assumed was the man's wife. "For all you know, one of these people could be SOLDIER!"

"So what?" the man groused back, his expression contorting in distaste. "All of the powerful members deserted bar-Sephiroth, and he's probably back in Midgar getting fat off of his blood money. I just hope that when the time comes, Shrina does to him what they do to everyone else who outlives their usefulness."

"Why would you wish that on him?" the wife rebutted. "Just because you weren't strong enough to make it into SOLDIER doesn't mean you didn't also fight in the War, and if I remember correctly it was Sephiroth's division that saved your corps from being totally wiped out. And in case you forgot, it was him who ended the War altogether!"

"It was men like him who started the War," the man replied bitterly, "and men like him who fought it. The world would be much better off without Shinra, and especially without their bloodhounds."

At those words, Sephiroth couldn't hold himself back any longer and he rose to his feet, speaking with quiet force as he did so.

"So, when they're taking lives to save your own, it's something you're grateful for; something you collapse down on your knees to praise as you weep like a pathetic child," he began, walking slowly towards the man who had so fiercely denounced him.

"But when that same brutality is applied to ending the War completely," he continued evenly, "it becomes something reprehensible, just because your life is no longer at stake? I'd always heard your division was a cancerous lump full of cowards and opportunists, Colonel Durand," Sephiroth finished as he turned and walked away, leaving the other soldier standing mute in shock,

"But it still pains me to learn just how right those whispers were."

Durand was silent with shock for several more moments, and by the time he shook himself out of his stupor the cloaked man was nowhere to be seen.

"Honey?" his wife broke in, her voice urgent and concerned. "Honey? Are you all right? Who _was_ that?"

The former Colonel shook his head, as much to banish the memories of the War that rose up in his head as to erase the image of the cloaked man who had cut so deeply with nothing but words.

"No one, dear," he replied gloomily, turning his eyes back over to regard the sunrise.

"No one at all."

* * *

Sephiroth felt slightly apprehensive about the possibility that Durand had recognized him despite his shroud, but shook it off in short order as the boat pulled into port at his destination. Soon he would be gone from sight, melted into the hustle and bustle of noise and lights and tourists that was the reformed Wutai. The thought that not too long ago this very soil had been the site of a brutal, glorious proving ground filled Sephiroth with an odd combination of bitterness and nostalgia, but it faded away as he sunk deeper into the mass of people crowding the streets. He took two left turns followed by three right ones until the SOLDIER was certain he'd moved far enough away from the main thoroughfares to find what he was looking for.

The black market always dwelled in the dark corners, the crags of society where all of the undesirable elements were swept and left to fester and be forgotten. Those crags were where Sephiroth would go, those dark places; it would be simple enough to glean at least some information out of a few drunk gangsters at the saloon up ahead. And then he would vanish once again, back into the crowd as he moved on like a shadow in search of his next lead.

The silence of the narrow street outside the building was shattered as the SOLDIER kicked open the thick, reinforced door of the saloon, lights and shouting and cursing rushing out to greet Sephiroth like old friends. The General made his way purposefully up to the bar, rapping on the wood with his knuckles. The barman squinted oddly at the cloaked newcomer, nervous that he couldn't see his face. He got over his anxiety quickly enough, though, as Sephiroth produced some coins from a pouch beneath his cloak.

"A beer," he said tersely. "Tap. Best you have."

The SOLDIER was halfway through his glass when some drunken idiot decided to have some sport as his expense, walking up behind Sephiroth and clapping his hand on his shoulder.

"Lookee 'ear, boys," the drunkard crowed. "We got oursel's a freak, it seems. Why else'd you wear a cloak li' that, huh? C'mon, show us whatcha look like under that hood, ya weirdo!"

Sephiroth was utterly unfazed by the words, taking another long pull of his drink before setting the glass down gently on the bar and replying.

"If you wish to keep that hand," he said evenly, with the barest undercurrent of a warning, "I suggest you remove it from my shoulder."

The drunk snarled at the implied threat, not even bothering to reply with words before he cocked his fist back and let loose with a blow aimed square at the back of Sephiroth's head. The SOLDIER felt it coming long before it landed and reacted instantly, his years of training and experience moving his hand to the grip of his _katana_ before he'd even consciously thought to draw the weapon. Turning around and unsheathing the blade in one smooth motion, Sephiroth watched dispassionately as the drunk's entire arm was separated from his body at the shoulder and fell to the ground, blood seeping from the severed limb's stump out onto the already-filthy and cracked wooden floor.

Dread silence settled over the bar in the wake of his counter-attack, and it was a few heartbeats before Sephiroth felt that his hood had been swept back away from his face during the strike. As he realized that everyone who had seen his face would have to be eliminated to ensure that he remained unknown, the SOLDIER allowed his muscles to relax and readied himself for the slaughter to come.

Brandishing his _katana_ in a tightly-controlled movement, the SOLDIER quickly took stock of the room: Some thugs with guns, a few with blades and one or two with some paltry Materia. Sephiroth smiled, feeling the thrill of battle beginning to flow through his veins once again.

This was going to be fun.

* * *

**A/N:** So that's it for Chapter One, ladies and gents. Final Fantasy VII recently sunk its fangs back into me after many years' absence while I was looking for something with which to take a break from _Bleach_ fics for a little bit, and this story is the result of that. I hope you enjoyed it, and **please review**.

And in case there's any confusion, this is set before Sephiroth finds Hojo's documents and goes batshit insane, which is why he doesn't act like a total monster with a God Complex.

For now, anyway.


	2. Brothers in Arms

**Anabasis**

**Chapter 2: **Brothers in Arms

* * *

The young man sitting at the saloon's corner table felt nature's call insistently tugging at him, so he tersely excused himself from his companions and rose, walking into the bathroom. As he stared into the mirror that was facing him while he stood at the stall, his eyes only saw the scars that ran in thin lines along his face and partway down his neck.

Memories of a war that had only just ended, some as fresh as the wounds of Wutai itself.

He felt his thoughts straying back to those he had left behind to go fight in the war, and to his friend that he would never see again, thanks to his own foolishness…

Finishing up with a sigh, the soldier turned around and was about to open the door back into the saloon when he heard the unmistakable sound of a large brawl going on in the main room. Unarmed and feeling too lazy to take on whoever had sparked the melee with just his fists, the man leaned back against the wall, closed his bright eyes and waited for the fight to come to an end.

* * *

The two carrying Materia were the first to drop, a quiet and precise sword-blow giving way to flailing and noisy falls as the bodies hit the floor, cleaved clean in half. Sephiroth pulled one of the orbs out of one of the severed hands as it fell, channeling enough of his own _mako_ energy into it to turn it into a tiny charged explosive before tossing it casually at one of the thugs holding a gun. He swept out again with his sword arm in the same movement, and the strength of the SOLDIER's enemies was cut in half before any of them had so much as scratched him.

One of the smarter brawlers tried to take advantage of the smokescreen cover that the Materia grenade had kicked up, but by the time he had plunged through the smog Sephiroth had already spun to the side. The next and last thing the man felt was a strong hand lashing out and gripping his throat firmly, before it jerked to the side and snapped his neck like a twig as the world faded into blackness.

Sephiroth relinquished his hold on the dead man, turning his feline green eyes on the last pair of miscreants and sighing internally; he had hoped to get at least a decent warm-up out of these drones, but they couldn't even give him that. Resolving to grant these last two worms at least the illusion of a fighting chance, the SOLDIER lodged his _katana_ in the floor point-down and eased his hand away from the grip. The duo's fighting spirit seemed to spike as they saw their foe willfully disarming himself, and they ran forward with their weather-beaten long knives raised high and ready to kill.

The SOLDIER decided to reward the first attacker's courage with a quick death, snapping the man's arm at the elbow before driving the thug's own knife into his neck. The second would-be fighter didn't get as merciful treatment, receiving multiple fist jabs to both sides of his ribcage and left to stare in dumb shock as his bones splintered and fragmented while the metallic tang of blood began to well up in his throat. Sephiroth didn't react as a small stream of blood arced through the air and splattered across his face; the dull warmth did more to bring back triumphant memories from battlefields past than to disgust him. Reaching back to the bar, the SOLDIER picked up the rest of his glass of beer and finished it as silence settled back over the now-vacant establishment, unbroken save for the buzzing of a few ambitious flies that had come to have their fill of the corpses.

Sephiroth didn't turn around to face the man who walked out of the bathroom and back into the light of the main room as soon as the slaughter had died down. He knew the sound of that gait as well as he knew his own, the slight hitch that always put the man's right foot slightly ahead of his left and lent a lilting cadence to his strides. Taking the time to finish his drink, Sephiroth let his old friend break the now-amicable quiet.

"Fancy seeing you here, Sir," the other SOLDIER said with his usual even tone, but Sephiroth could detect a slight edge of warmth to the voice. "What brought you back?"

"I could ask you that same question, Strife," the green-eyed SOLDIER parried casually as he put his empty glass down on the bar, before turning to properly face his former Second-in-Command. "Weren't you going to go back to Midgar and start a family with that sweetheart of yours once the War ended?"

Cloud's blue eyes narrowed slightly at the question. They still gleamed with the cursed luster that all members of SOLDIER possessed, and his obnoxious hair was still as unruly as ever. But Sephiroth could also still see the killer behind Cloud's stoic exterior, and it made part of him melancholy to witness it. He had hoped that Cloud would be able to let go of the War for the sake of all of those who couldn't, but it seemed as though a SOLDIER was a SOLDIER to the bone. Forever.

"No," Cloud answered finally, "not yet."

Sephiroth thought about pressing the question, but relented in the end; Cloud could be incredibly stubborn when he wanted to be, and his former superior was in no mood for verbal jousting. Not when he had a mission to fulfill. Grabbing a second bottle of beer from behind the deserted bar, Sephiroth poured Cloud a glass and motioned for him to take a seat. The blue-eyed SOLDIER did so, waiting patiently for the order he knew would follow.

"I'm here on a mission from Shinra, Strife," Sephiroth began to explain as Cloud began to drink, already not liking where this was going.

"Something was stolen from Hojo's Laboratory, and the higher-ups want it back."

Cloud was quiet for a few beats, swirling the amber liquid around idly in its glass as he thought about how to reply.

"Something?" he asked, figuring it would be best to get everything out on the table now, "or some_one_, Sir?"

Sephiroth's oddly slit pupils narrowed even further, a sign that Cloud had gotten under his skin. Rather than backing down as he might have done in the past, however, Cloud chose to press his advantage. He wasn't technically Sephiroth's subordinate any more, after all, and he might as well use his freedom to speak frankly.

"You're looking at me like I wasn't in the SOLDIER program with you, Sir," he continued, tacking on the honorific out of habit. "I spent time in that sick fuck's den, too, and I know he doesn't keep specimens that aren't alive."

Sephiroth's glare relented, and he nodded his head ever so slightly.

"Yes, Strife, some_one_ was stolen. Or maybe they escaped the got picked up afterward, but the point remains that Shinra and Hojo want them back."

"And no one can say no to Shinra or Hojo," Cloud finished the thought bitterly, killing his beer. "Especially not their loyal dogs. What's the tag number of your prey, Sir?"

"C-54AR1."

Cloud flicked quickly through his scattered memories of those days as Hojo's test subject, soon finding a face to put to the number.

"Oh," he uttered reflexively as Aeris' face surfaced in his mind, before his eyebrows furrowed back into a frown. "I guess that explains why the President sent you, huh, Sir?"

"Yes," the other SOLDIER replied quietly, "I suppose it does."

The two comrades spent the next few moments lost in a swirl of their thoughts and alcohol, until Cloud pulled himself up out of his mental maelstrom and spoke again.

"So, you going ask for my help, Sir, or am I gonna have to make the offer myself?"

The corners of Sephiroth's mouth turned up in a smirk, taking a small amount of comfort from the fact that some things never changed.

"Old habits die hard, Strife," he answered, and Cloud mirrored his former superior's smirk.

"That they do, Sir," the blue-eyed SOLDIER agreed with a hint of bitterness as he rose to his feet and Sephiroth followed suit, the General snatching up his _katana _and Cloud grabbing his Buster Sword as the pair walked out of the saloon and back into the darkness of night and the urgency of the hunt.

"That they do."

* * *

Sephiroth had been content to let someone else take point for once while he continued to grapple with his tenacious shred of conscience, face outwardly placid as Cloud strode through back alleys and meandering side streets with unerring confidence. When the blond-haired SOLDIER suddenly stopped in front of a steel plate door adorned by a single slotted space and knocked in a strange rhythm, though, Sephiroth came out of his own thoughts and spoke.

"Why are we stopping here, Strife?"

Cloud turned his head back partway over his shoulder and smirked.

"You wanted information, didn't you? If you're looking for leads on the black market, Sir, this is one of the best places to do it."

Sephiroth studied the door again, more attentively this time, and his eyes soon picked out a large but delicately crafted and artfully concealed engraving. The scene depicted was that of a serpent sinking its fangs into the neck of a mongoose, and the General's face contorted slightly in disdain.

"I didn't think you consorted with this sort of trash, Strife."

Cloud shrugged, the hefty Buster Sword at his back rising and falling as he did so.

"Are you seriously talking about maintaining standards and trying to deal with the criminal underworld at the same time? With all due respect, Sir," he finished, "I assumed you were smarter than that."

As much as it rankled with Sephiroth, he wasn't too proud to admit to himself when someone else had out-reasoned him. He was certainly too proud to admit such a thing _out loud_, but he tacitly ceded the point to Cloud all the same. The green-eyed SOLDIER put the hood of his cloak back up as he heard footsteps approaching on the other side of the door. The deserted streets had given Sephiroth the luxury of walking without the damn thing hanging over him; the room he was about to enter, however, would most likely be full of people who had sworn blood oaths to take his head or die trying.

The slat opened with a sharp click, revealing nothing more than a pair of cold, coal-black eyes.

"What do you want, punk?" a hard voice spoke out from behind the door, but Cloud was unfazed by the derogatory address.

"Information. Tell Kimura I'm here to collect on his debt."

The gangster scoffed, but seemed to relent— until his eyes shifted over and saw another figure standing to Cloud's left.

"Who the hell is that?"

"He's with me," Cloud parried instantly, leaving no room for argument. "Just open the damn door already, will you?"

The guard wavered and cracked, sliding the thin panel back shut before a few rumbling grinding noises were heard coming from behind the closed door. A few moments later the heavy door swung back and open, Cloud entering into the atrium ahead of his comrade. For his part, Sephiroth had resolved to get through this tedious prerequisite with as few words said as was humanly possible. That plan came to an abrupt halt, however, as one of the routine search men demanded that he remove his cloak after he'd taken away Sephiroth's weapons. Anger and annoyance almost drove Sephiroth's hand through the peon's face, but Cloud quickly recognized the subtle wrath in Sephiroth's posture and stepped between the two men.

"Trust me when I say you don't want to do that, friend," the blond-haired SOLDIER spoke seriously. "This guy here's a leper, see, and we're just here to find out where the black market medicine vendors are. Push back that hood and I guarantee you're gonna have nightmares for months."

The gangster had a sudden change of heart, stepping back to allow Sephiroth and Cloud though. As soon as the duo had passed by the next group of guards and stood alone in front of the door to Boss Kimura's chambers, the General was the one who pierced the tense quiet.

"A leper?" he asked, dry amusement in his voice. "Really? That's the best you could come up with, Strife?"

Cloud made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a huff, one of his hands scratching absently at the empty space where his Buster Sword usually resided.

"At least it was something," the other SOLDIER replied testily, "and it kept you from sparking off another unnecessary bloodbath." Cloud lapsed into silence for a view moments, his face reflective, before he spoke again.

"Hey, Sephiroth," he began, and the other man could tell something was amiss from the moment Cloud dropped his usual 'Sir', "are you feeling all right? I've never seen you this rattled before."

"I'm fine," Sephiroth replied, a little too easily. "What makes you think I'm not?"

"You're acting emotional," Cloud replied pointedly. "I've seen you cut through men like they were nothing more than wheat without so much as twitching, and you were about to break that grunt's neck back there for no reason."

Determined to force his comrade to think about his words without replying, Cloud pushed open the door before Sephiroth had a chance to speak and walked into the main room of the hideout. After giving a respectful half-bow to the Boss, the SOLDIER got right down to business.

"We're looking for stolen Shinra goods, Kimura-san," Cloud began, a level of deferential respect in his voice that almost made Sephiroth chuckle in scorn, "and we heard they were making the rounds here in Wutai. You have any idea where we might find them?"

Kimura smiled knowingly and rubbed his fingers together at the question. Clearly, whatever debt he owed Cloud was one he had no intention of repaying, and with a room full of soldiers at his disposal the gangster was free to make demands.

Cloud scowled, but reached into his pocket all the same and withdrew a pouch of Gil. As soon as the heavy leather bag was in Kimura's clutches, the gangster boss opened up like a flower.

"The latest news is that they're to the south, holed up in some of the mountains thereabouts. Good luck finding them, kid."

If Cloud was pissed off that he'd just been more-or-less swindled out of a solid chunk of cash, he didn't show it.

"Why would they be all the way down there?" he asked instead, trying to get at least something worthwhile out of this worm. "Those mountains aren't exactly profitable."

Kimura's serpentine smile widened, his eyes twinkling wryly.

"Let me put it this way, kid," he answered, his tone beyond patronizing. "If you had stolen Shinra contraband you were trying to get rid of, and you had even the slightest hunch that they were going to send people after you to get that contraband back, would you be flaunting it in public? Like you said, it might not be profitable, but the only place those merchants can afford to sell is out in those mountains. Unless, of course, they'd rather their throats get cut open by the Turks."

Getting the sense that he wasn't going to be drawing any more information out of the unctuous bastard in front of him without spending every last coin he possessed, Cloud nodded tersely and executed a half-turn with military precision before walking swiftly from the room. Sephiroth followed once again, his thoughts too focused on getting to Aeris as quickly as possible to worry about Strife upstaging him. Besides, his loyalty ran deep, and Sephiroth was sure that if he gave an order, Cloud would obey it.

The duo made their way to an inn and rested for the night, as all Chocobo stables had been closed by the time the meeting with Boss Kimura had concluded. As soon as the sun was high enough in the sky, Sephiroth and Cloud made their way to a nearby stable and bought the two hardiest Chocobo that were left. It was tempting to go for raw speed over endurance; both of the SOLDIER veterans knew how long of a journey this was going to be, though, and the last thing either of them wanted was for their Chocobo to die of exhaustion in the middle of a mountain range.

By the time the sun was a little more than halfway to the highest point in its journey, the two warriors that were the pride of Shinra's military were leading their respective mounts at an easy gallop over the plain. Both of them were silent, lost in their own thoughts as was the norm between the two long-time comrades; there was no need for small talk, especially not now. But while Sephiroth's mind was focused solely on reconciling himself with the harsh reality of Aeris' inevitable return to captivity at Hojo's hands, Cloud's thoughts were decidedly more fragmented.

He thought of Tifa, his oldest friend and childhood crush, whom he hadn't seen since they'd been kids and he'd decided to run off and join SOLDIER. He wondered what she was up to now; he hadn't had a chance to send a letter to her from the front, nor had he received any. He thought of his home back in Midgar, and wondered what it might look like now; he hadn't set foot on the Eastern Continent since leaving for the War here in Wutai, and for all he knew the little apartment was run-down and derelict.

Most of all, though, Cloud thought of Zack Fair, the Shinra Corps soldier who hadn't been fit to make it past the _mako_-infusion stage of SOLDIER indoctrination. That snub hadn't stopped Zack from growing into a fine warrior in his own right, though, and Cloud had been thinking about handing his Buster Sword over to him when the time came to settle down and have a family. But those hopes had been dashed when Zack had perished during the War, sacrificing himself to save Cloud from an ambush and almost certain death. The blue-eyed SOLDIER had never forgiven himself for being so careless as to put Zack in that position in the first place, and even now his friend's bloody visage would rise up from time to time to haunt Cloud's dreams.

_Zack_, he thought gravely as he tightened his grip on the Chocobo's reins and spurred it onwards,

_I'm so sorry_.

* * *

………………………

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**A/N:** So here's Chapter 2, ladies and gents. Hope you enjoyed it, and **please review!** This should be the last of the setup chapters, as shite starts hitting the fan in the next installment. And Aeris finally actually shows up! Huzzah.

And I kinda switched roles around here a bit between Cloud and Zack, giving Cloud more-or-less Zack's canon role as SOLDIER 1st Class and giving Zack the Cloud role of 'guy who's far out of his depth but fights hard anyway'. Hope that clears up any confusion that might have arisen at the end there.


	3. Spark

**Anabasis**

**Chapter 3: **Spark

* * *

"So tell me, Sir," Cloud spoke at last as the sun was beginning to dip past the horizon, and the searchers had yet to locate their quarry. "What kind of person is Aeris, exactly? She must be pretty special, to have you looking for her so intently."

Sephiroth realized he was pushing his Chocobo harder than was necessary, and let up on the reins a bit before sitting up in the saddle and sighing as he popped the joints in his back.

"First off, Strife," he said, "drop the 'Sir'; I'm not your technical superior anymore, and we're not fighting a war."

Cloud smirked from his position on Sephiroth's right, his eyes glinting with rare mischief behind his shades.

"Whatever you say, General," he replied, and the other SOLDIER just shook his head in mock dismay before continuing his reply.

"What kind of person is Aeris?" Sephiroth repeated, turning his eyes to gaze out at the accelerating sunset as his mind conjured images of the quiet moments they'd shared all those years ago, separated by iron bars in the bowels of Hojo's laboratory.

"I guess you could say that she was the kind of person who had it in her to hope for the best, even when she was locked in a cell and effectively Hojo's property."

"Huh," Cloud replied simply, mulling over Sephiroth's words. "That pretty much says it all."

"But if there's one thing we as soldiers can hold to be true," the other SOLDIER continued, his voice turning graver and more uncertain, "it's that time and trauma can break anyone."

Clould was quiet for a few moments, but when he spoke again his tone was decidedly upbeat—or as upbeat as Cloud usually got, anyway.

"Well," he said, "she still sounds like the kind of person who could take it and walk away fine, even if you had to leave her behind to train as a SOLDIER. Besides, she escaped form Shinra, didn't she? That takes some spine, for sure, so I doubt Hojo broke her completely."

Part of Sephiroth wanted to believe his comrade's words, but those same words also planted a seed of doubt in his mind. What if Aeris had been too weak to carry on without him there? It was a foolish thought, and one that did a gross disservice to the strength he knew resided within the last of the Cetra, but it festered in the back of Sephiroth's mind all the same. It was further compounded by the concern that if Hojo's treatment had weakened her in the slightest, let alone broken her, that his betrayal of her to Shinra now would be the straw that would break Aeris' back.

"General."

Cloud's voice, sterner than usual, pulled Sephiroth out of his thoughts.

"Focus. I'm sure she'll be fine, but you're not going to be doing her any favors if you walk in there fretting like an old woman."

The combination of Cloud's cutting tone and the words he spoke with it snapped the green-eyed SOLDIER back to himself in an instant, and his gaze hardened as he regarded his long-time comrade.

"If you ever speak to me that way again, Strife," he said evenly, "I do not care what service you may have done me on the battlefield in the past, I swear I will bisect you."

Cloud replied to the clear threat with a smile, chuckling.

"Glad to hear it, General," he answered, before his eyes narrowed and focused on a point in the distance. "Hey," he called out, his voice raised slightly in urgency, "is that them over there?"

Sephiroth followed Cloud's gaze with his own, his eyes soon settling on a group of tents arranged on top of a nearby plateau. A robust fire's light illuminated the path up the craggy side of the rock formation, and Sephiroth nodded his agreement as the pair shifted course and galloped towards the plateau. After tying their Chocobo to some natural rock spires at the base so that the mounts could get some rest for the night, the two SOLDIERs began the climb up the steep rock face.

It was not a terribly difficult trek, and under normal circumstances Cloud and Sephiroth would have sped up it with movements that could have quite accurately been described as 'sprightly'. After a day's worth of riding with almost no time set aside for resting, though, both of the warriors were feeling a bit fatigued. By the time both of them had crested the rock, one of the traders had heard them coming and had walked over to meet them. He recognized Cloud's face, but Sephiroth had once again hidden beneath his hood; the last thing the General wanted to do now was make a scene, and he knew that the sight of him tended to bring that impulse out in people.

"What can I do for you, gentlemen?" the merchant broached, speaking with effusive courtesy. Cloud kept his expression impassive, motioning with one gloved hand towards the nearest tent.

"You have any Shinra goods?"

The merchant became decidedly less friendly at the question, suddenly regarding the man before him with the utmost scrutiny.

"You've got that _mako_ gleam in your eyes, boy," he said lowly, his hand reaching around to the back of his waist for what Sephiroth was sure was a knife. Maybe if he was stupid enough to draw it, they could get this pointless negotiation over with.

"You with Shinra, perchance?"

Cloud snorted derisively at the question, shaking his head negatively.

"Used to be," he answered. "I got out when Genesis and Angeal pulled their exodus from SOLDIER, though; I'm about as fond of those corporate bastards as you are."

Sephiroth smirked beneath his hood; Cloud's talent for spinning convincing lies on the fly had served them many times during the phases of the Wutai War that had required more subterfuge than slaughter, and it seemed as though Strife's gift would reap a few more benefits yet. The merchant's expression returned to being somewhat genteel again. Still guarded, but nonetheless reopened to the possibility of trade.

"Glad to hear that, boy; glad to hear that indeed," he spoke affably, and Cloud felt his hackles raising almost past the point of control after having been called 'boy' so many times recently. He held his temper in check with practiced restraint, however, and listened attentively to the rest of the merchant's words.

"We managed to round up quite a bit of jettisoned Shinra merchandise this last haul, actually: some real gems in this lot."

"Any live specimens?" Sephiroth pressed, wanting to get on with it, but fortunately the merchant roundly ignored Cloud's cloaked comrade and acted as if it had been Cloud himself who had asked the question.

"We do have one, yes," he allowed after a moment, "but before I give her up, I have to know what you plan t'do with her."

"Why would that matter?" Cloud asked with an arched eyebrow, and the merchant began to wring his hands nervously.

"Well, you see," he answered haltingly, "it's kind of hard to explain, but this girl… she's kind of our 'lucky charm,' I guess you could say."

"'Lucky charm'?" Sephiroth repeated incredulously, his voice scathing. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Look, I can't explain it, all right?" the man countered brusquely. "It's just that, well, good things happen to us when this broad's around. Patrols look the other way, the weather always falls how we need it to, things like that."

Cloud noticed how the hand of Sephiroth's sword-arm clenched into a fist as Aeris was referred to as a 'broad', and resolved to razz him for it later. For now, though, there was business to conduct.

"I can understand how that would be a great advantage, of course," the blue-eyed SOLDIER replied smoothly, "but we have a far more pressing need on our end. We think that Shinra was using the girl's blood as a sort of living petri dish for the development of a new biological weapon, and we need to use her to make an antidote. In the event that Shinra ever unleashes the weapon in question, the vaccine would be in incredibly high demand, as I'm sure you can imagine. And of course," Cloud finished, smiling as he delivered the coup de grace,

"You and your traders here would have exclusive license to sell said vaccine."

Sephiroth could only marvel at how quickly the merchant's sentiment was overcome by greed at the proposal, all thoughts of Aeris fleeing from his head as Gil rushed in to replace them.

"Right this way, please, gentlemen," the merchant said at length, waving his hand in a wide arc before taking off towards the closest tent. The two SOLDIERs shared a sidelong look before they followed, Cloud rolling his eyes in scorn. As the merchant sped up his stride in excitement, the two SOLDIERs shifted over to walk within speaking range of one another.

"You sure I can't just kill him now, General?" Cloud grit out, and Sephiroth gave an amused chuckle.

"Now, now, boy," he jibed, "don't let him get to you. That's immature."

Cloud smirked through his anger, only placated because he knew there was little he could do to get back at Sephiroth without fighting him outright. And that course of action was, regrettably, out of the question at the moment.

There were other forms of warfare Cloud was adept at apart from those that required a sword, however. His smirk widening, the blue-eyed SOLDIER launched a counter-attack.

"I wonder if time has changed this Aeris broad after all," he quipped. "You think maybe she'll see sense and realize that I'm more attractive and sociable than you'll ever be?"

Sephiroth said nothing for a few beats, but when he spoke there was a smirk in his voice to match the physical one no doubt covered up by his hood.

"Touché, Strife."

The verbal rapport that the two of them were so accustomed to from the War had resurfaced like no time had passed at all, and it almost made Cloud nostalgic for the conflict that had shattered Wutai. All of his war buddies were either dead or at the bottom of bottles; he and the General were the last vestiges of Shinra's once-proud SOLDIER program. And it was a SOLDIER's curse that no one could truly understand what it was like to be a SOLDIER, except for another person cut from the same cloth, and trained in the same way.

"Ah, here we are," the merchant's voice piped up again at last, as he pulled aside tent's main flap and stepped in. The pair of warriors ducked and followed him in, surprised to find that the interior was a good deal more spacious than they might have guessed from the outside. Torchlight shone from sconces placed along the wall, casting a warm, almost ethereal glow around the whole room.

"Aeris! Oy, Aeris," the merchant called out. "Someone's here to buy you!"

"I heard you the first time, Jared," a slightly-irritated but nonetheless kind voice replied, growing louder as its owner walked closer and closer to the trio. "There's no reason to shout."

Cloud couldn't see her very well at first on account of the dim lighting, but that changed when Aeris stepped fully into the light. His breath stopped in his throat, and Cloud was fairly sure that his mouth dropped partway open on its own.

She was beautiful. And not just in the physical sense, although she had plenty going for her on that account: from her vibrant, dark green eyes to the way her dark brown hair framed her face so perfectly. There was just something about her that radiated calm and serenity, almost like an aura that cloaked her and gave her a subtle, but undeniable air of majesty. Cloud didn't know if the effect she was having on him was due to her Cetra heritage or just because she happened to be stunning to look at, but there was one thing he _was_ certain of:

He would give his left arm in a heartbeat to see the look on Sephiroth's face right now.

"Jared, if you would be so kind as to give us a few moments to ourselves," Aeris spoke, her tone not requesting in the slightest. "I would like to speak with these men."

"But of course," the merchant replied magnanimously, re-opening the flap and stepping halfway back outside before he stopped and turned back to face the two SOLDIERs.

"Don't forget to pay what you owe me, or SOLDIER or no, I'll cut your throats."

Cloud nodded in understanding, letting an amused chuckle past his lips only after the merchant was on the other side of the flap and out of earshot.

"He always like that?" the blue-eyed warrior asked Aeris, and the Cetra nodded wearily.

"Unfortunately, yes. I think he'd look a Midgar Zolom in the eye and tell it he was going to beat it senseless, honestly. But enough about him," Aeris continued, her tone of voice shifting to a much more upbeat gear, "let's talk about you two."

With that, she sprawled out on a nearby couch and motioned for her two visitors to take a seat on the empty one across from her, an offer that Sephiroth and Cloud both quickly accepted. Aeris lay fully reclined opposite them, her head propped up by one of her hands as she looked at the men with amusement that bordered on pixieish.

"You certainly took your time finding me, Sephiroth."

Sephiroth pulled back his hood at the playful accusation, truly locking eyes with his old friend at last and still somehow managing to maintain his usual emotional poker face.

"Considering the circumstances that separated us in the first place, Aeris," he parried, "I really don't think that's a fair accusation for you to be making."

The Cetra's face scrunched up as she stared at the SOLDIER.

"All these years go by, and you still haven't learned how to take a joke," she said. "Guess I shoulda known better than to expect miracles, though."

"And I suppose I should have known better than to expect you to have matured even a little with the passing of time," Sephiroth countered levelly, his eyes narrowing just enough to be threatening. "You're still fond of prattling on about meaningless tripe, I see."

"And you're still hopelessly conceited," Aeris shot back sharply, moving to a sitting position as she began to stare daggers at the General. Cloud was feeling more and more awkward as the exchange went on and the atmosphere became more and more heated; he had already slid to the edge of the couch he was currently sitting on, and if this continued for much longer he would have to bolt for the safety of the outdoors. There was no way he wanted to stay in a room with Sephiroth and the one person on the planet who could truly go toe-to-toe with him in a contest of wills while they were having an argument.

"And you're still irrevocably arrogant, 'Last of the Cetra'," Sephiroth seethed with barely controlled ire as Cloud rose quietly from his seat and hurried towards the exit, quickly ducking through the flap and taking in a huge breath of the outside air.

"And you're—" Aeris began again, only to have her next insult cut off by a stifled chuckle. Unable to hold it in for more than a few seconds, she was soon laughing merrily, while an amused smile spread across Sephiroth's face.

"Man, that was great," the Cetra forced out between laughs. "I kinda feel bad for putting him through that, though. He must be terrified right now, Sephiroth."

"Cloud? No," the General disagreed with a light shake of his head, "he's made of sterner stuff than that. He might avoid you for a while, though. But was it really necessary to go through all of that production just to get him out of the picture, Aeris?"

The Cetra stood at the question, Sephiroth rising as well; it always made him uncomfortable being looked down upon. Her expression becoming decidedly teasing again, Aeris slowly closed the space between them and reached up, placing a hand gently against his cheek.

"What, was it not worth it?" she asked, taking a moment to cast her eye more carefully over her old friend's matured features. He was still Sephiroth, but years of training and combat had taken what innocence she had once seen in his face and bled it dry.

"I wouldn't say that," Sephiroth replied, jolting Aeris from her thoughts. She was pleased to find a spark of warmth still resided deep within his eyes, albeit protected by countless layers of emotional armor. As one of his hands closed around her own, the smile he had worn a few moments earlier flickered across his face once more.

"It's good to see you again, Aeris."

She smiled warmly, lowering her hand and moving it away from Sephiroth's grip as she wrapped her arm around his waist instead and rested her head lightly against his sternum.

"You too," she mumbled, before she seemed to realize something and looked up at him, her eyes narrowing.

"When did you get so damn tall?" she griped. "I let you out of my sight for a few years and you come back looking like a freaking redwood. That's just not fair!"

The General only chuckled, sinking back down onto the couch and taking Aeris along with him so that they were sitting side-by-side.

"Better?"

The Cetra sighed in acquiescence, but when she spoke her tone was light.

"It'll do, I guess."

Sephiroth was silent as he looked over at the woman leaning next to him with such a contented expression on her face, his own stoic expression betraying nothing of the turmoil his emotions were going through. He had finally found what he had been searching for after so long, but a sense of fatalism swept through the SOLDIER in the same moment he felt victorious. It was clearly fate's cruel idea of a joke that he would be forced to give up what he had gained far too soon.

He had known he was in trouble the moment she'd stepped out into the light in front of him. The moment he'd looked into those eyes again after so long, Sephiroth could feel the same instincts stirring that he'd felt back in Hojo's laboratory. The instincts that told him to keep her safe, to keep her away from that mad scientist's grip as well as he was able. And as much as he tried to fight it, as hard as he tried to stonewall himself against her, in the end all it had taken was a single playful look from Aeris to bring those vaunted defenses crumbling down. And the fact that the girl he had once known had somehow blossomed into a gorgeous young woman certainly didn't help matters, either; even now it was a struggle to keep his eyes focused on her face and not letting them wander as they wished.

He had tried to distance himself from her, even to go as far as to attempt to dehumanize her, but such a thing was impossible when the person in question was nothing less than a living embodiment of the Planet's very life-force. And now he was going to have to surrender her back to the man he hated most, too weak to do otherwise.

"Stop being so gloomy, Sephiroth," Aeris grumbled beside him. "It's ruining my good mood. And don't you dare try to blame yourself for this, either," she appended, drawing a rare look of surprise from the General. "This is Shinra and Hojo's fault, and no one else's. Certainly not yours, anyway."

"Can you…?" he began to ask, only to be cut off as the Cetra shook her head.

"Read your mind? No, don't be ridiculous. What I _can_ do, though, is get a sense of your emotions from your aura, and if you were laying 'self-pity' on any thicker right now I swear I'd suffocate."

The cheeky reply coaxed a smirk out of Sephiroth and he relaxed slightly, as much for his own benefit as for Aeris'. He still felt a deep unease piercing him, though, and for the first time since the transition between his training and the War, Sephiroth found himself unsure of what to do.

"Jeez," the Cetra continued as she looked at her old friend, melancholy lacing her words, "what did they do to you? You might look different on the outside, but after so many years you're still that same worried kid I saw across from me every day. We'll think of something, I'm sure of it."

There was something in her combination of regret, stubborn idealism and borderline patronizing attitude that grated deeply with Sephiroth, and before Aeris had even registered that the space next to her was empty and all-but devoid of warmth, the SOLDIER was already halfway to the door. She called out to him, but the General was no longer in any mood to listen; whatever calm she had laid over him had been ripped to shreds, replaced once more by the tension and stress that had been gnawing at him all day.

"I'm going to go pay that swine his dues," Sephiroth said coldly as he parted the canvas barrier, his voice tinted with steel, "and then I'm going to get some sleep. I suggest you do the same; we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow."

He stalked over and all but gave Jared the merchant a heart attack as he shoved a pouch of coins into the stout man's hand, not bothering to raise his hood and instead giving the merchant a look that quite clearly told him to stay silent about this or die. Leaving the man behind him in a quivering pile on the ground, Sephiroth walked and walked and walked until he felt like stopping, finding himself on the far side of the plateau. Sitting down on a rock, he looked up at the crescent moon that hung high in the sky and sighed. He was troubled by a great many things, but there was one matter that stuck out far above all others.

And that was the possibility that Aeris had been correct in her evaluation of him. What if he really was still just a child stuck in a man's body, a dog that only knew how to take orders? Thinking back over his long and glory-filled military career, Sephiroth realized with no small amount of dismay that he had never made a decision of his own accord apart from how exactly he cut his enemies in half. All of the major calls during the campaign had been made by the old, rotting President Shinra, and his General had just carried them out. Sephiroth had never acted on his own, because that was not a SOLDIER's job. Even during training, he had only acted as had been dictated by the rules of the scenarios he had undertaken. A SOLDIER's job was to obey, and nothing else.

But as he looked up at the moon pensively, the warrior recalled the sound of Aeris' laugh from earlier, and the brightness of her smile. As those images lingered in his mind, Sephiroth felt the compulsion to act on his own for the first time growing stronger and stronger. So Shinra wanted him to silence that laughter, to wipe that smile away for good?

"If that's the case," he spoke to the clear night sky, feeling the weight of his anxiety leave him along with his words, "they'll have to find another dog to fight for them.

"I'm done with being a SOLDIER."

* * *

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**A/N:** What, you didn't think I'd make it _that_ easy, did you ;-)? Sephiroth and Aeris haven't seen each other in a _while_, after all; they have some issues to work through before rainbows and butterflies can commence appearing. Well, all the same, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, and **please review!** I know the inertia can be hard to overcome, believe me, but give it a shot. If nothing else, the feedback inspires me to write harder, better, faster and stronger. That's good, right?

Thanks again to those of you who have reviewed consistently; you all rock.


	4. Mai Fidarsi Dei Turchi

**Anabasis**

**Chapter 4: **Mai Fidarsi Dei Turchi

* * *

Rufus Shinra looked up from the sheet of paper in front of him as Tseng coughed lightly, the ruthless heir's eyes sharp even as the rest of him looked exhausted.

"Thank you all for coming on such short notice," Rufus began, getting the formalities out of the way. "According to my mole within the Wutai merchant camp selling our goods, it appears as though our targets are on the move."

"Took him long enough," Reno broke in, running a hand through his red hair impatiently. "So, when're we moving out, Boss?"

"You're not, Reno," the heir cut back in sharply. "The game's changed."

The atmosphere shifted at Rufus' pronouncement; the game changing was almost never, ever a good thing.

"How so?"

This from Rude, picking up his friend's slack as he readjusted his shades out of habit. Rufus sighed lightly before replying, the minuscule gesture serving only to put the assembled Turks even further on edge.

"Sephiroth picked up an ally along the way," the heir explained. "And although it pains me to say it, this tips the scales too far in Sephiroth's favor for any of you to be effective against him in the slightest."

"Who's the new variable, Sir?" Tseng asked calmly, and Rufus took a sip from the lowball glass full of brandy resting on his desk before he answered.

"Cloud Strife."

A colorful string of curses came out of Reno's mouth at the revelation, Rude's brow knitted itself into a particularly deep furrow and Tseng hung his head in a combination of frustration and despair. Only one person among the four Turks was too dumbstruck to react: the newest member, who had joined the Turks only eight years ago, right around the beginning of the Wutai War.

Tifa Lockhart.

"Cloud?" she breathed out, and suddenly every eye in the room was trained on her. "What the hell is he doing there?"

"That part of it is quite irrelevant, Tifa," Rufus replied evenly. "What matters is that he is there now, not how he got there. But I suppose that, too, is irrelevant," the heir finished as he took another sip of brandy,

"Because you're not going anywhere near Wutai."

"Good call, boss," Reno broke in. "Putting her anywhere near that guy would be a huge mis—"

"Yet."

The red-haired Turk's sentence was truncated by his surprise as Rufus slipped in the single word like a well-placed dagger to the back, causing the atmosphere to shift once again; this time, from anxious to a mixture of shocked and skeptical.

"Sir," Tseng began in protest, but Rufus silenced the Turk's leader with a look, taking the floor once again.

"Like I said earlier," the Shinra heir continued as if Tseng had never spoken a word, "the game has changed. The Turks, even as powerful as they may be, wouldn't stand a chance against the two most powerful living SOLDIERs and the last of the Cetra. It would be suicide to send you to apprehend them, and I'm not about to condemn my most trusted troops to death for the sake of a risky gambit. No," Rufus finished as he closed his eyes slowly,

"We need an ace-in-the-hole. And that's where Tifa comes in.

"You're going to Nibelhiem. Specifically, to the old Shinra Mansion."

The rest of the Turks had slight misgivings at the prospect of Tifa being sent off on her own, but only Reno was blunt enough to give his voice.

"She's flying solo?" he blurted out. "Not that I don't have faith in 'er, or anything, yo," he added quickly, knowing full-well how hard Tifa's left hook hit, "but don't you think that's a tad unwise, boss? At least give her one of us as a wingman."

"I would if I could, Reno," Rufus countered succinctly, "but as it stands, you three will be… otherwise occupied."

"Doing what, exactly?"

Tseng gave entering the conversation another shot with the question, and this time the Shinra heir didn't stop him. On the contrary, a smirk slipped over Rufus' expression and every Turk in the room knew that they were not going to like their bosses' next words.

"Helping to coordinate the capture of Sephiroth, Cloud and Aeris at the hands of Wutai's military, of course."

One of Rude's eyebrows arched up from behind his ever-present sunglasses at the reply.

"I thought you said it would be suicide to go up against them, Sir."

Rufus' smirk only widened.

"I did say that, Rude, yes."

The Turks set their minds to puzzling through their bosses' latest scheme, and Tseng was the first one to cross the finish line.

"You want plausible deniability."

Rufus' smirk widened into a smile that seethed predatory confidence.

"Precisely."

Tifa was the next to catch on, and she had to admire the fact that her boss had found a way to top even himself.

"So while I'm in Nibelhiem," she began, tracing Rufus' plan from the beginning to make sure she was right, "these three are going to be helping bring in Cloud and the others… just in time for me to roll in with the 'Ace' and bust them out. And since the rest of the Turks will be acting under your father's direct orders," Tifa concluded as she moved into the masterstroke,

"It'll make you look like the good guy, and put Sephiroth in your debt."

Rufus' expression became tinted with amusement, and his eyes shifted over to glance at Reno.

"Now do you see why she's going to Nibelheim, Reno?"

The red-haired Turk just shrugged, his pride a little wounded by being put so squarely on the spot. Rude stepped in, voicing the lone question that was still nagging him.

"So, what are you going to be doing, boss?" he asked. "Sitting here smoking a cigar and playing puppet master, watching everything fall into place?"

The Shinra heir leaned back like a lion after a successful hunt, finishing off his brandy and chuckling.

"And miss out on all of the skulduggery?" he asked, his tone dryly incredulous. "Are you kidding, Rude? That's the best part. No," Rufus explained as he laid the lowball glass back down on the desk with a soft _clink_,

"I'm going to be going with Tifa to Nibelheim."

At this point, most of the Turks in the room gave up trying to rationalize their bosses' behavior and just wrote him off as nuts.

"Sir, you don't have to do that," Tifa replied hesitantly, caught totally off-guard. "I work better alone anyway, and you have responsibilities to take care of here—"

"Not yet, I don't," Rufus parried easily. "My father is still President, which means I'm still the crown prince. But most importantly, our 'Ace' is going to need a little leverage to convince him to work with us. And if I'm not there to provide it, there's a good chance he would kill you without a second thought."

Her bosses' words caused Tifa's blood to run cold in her veins; Tseng spoke next, covering for her shock.

"And who exactly, is this 'Ace', Sir?" he asked pointedly. "If he would kill someone like Tifa without a second thought just for disturbing him, do you really think he can be counted on?"

Rufus was silent for a few moments, getting up out of his chair and turning his back to the Turks, gazing out the window in silence at the moon.

"Tseng," he began seriously, the smugness totally drained from his voice,

"What do you know about Vincent Valentine?"

* * *

Cloud Strife normally loved eating breakfast. It was one of his favorite meals of the day, and helped give him the energy he needed to slog through blood-soaked battlefields and stay awake enough to disarm landmines without getting himself blown sky-high. Under usual circumstances, breakfast was an incredibly enjoyable haven from the rest of his existence as a SOLDIER.

But unfortunately for Cloud, right now Sephiroth was doing all he could to make this breakfast decidedly abnormal. Specifically, by acting… well… _normal_. The General was savoring his own cut of ham with an air of relish that Cloud had never seen him exude before, and it was creeping the blue-eyed warrior out big time.

"Okay, General," Cloud finally said, past the point of staying silent, "spill it. What's got you acting so pleased all of a sudden?"

Sephiroth didn't respond to the question immediately, settling for an inquisitively arched eyebrow until his bite of food was done.

"Does my behavior really strike you as that abnormal, Cloud?" he asked. "I might have been a SOLDIER, but that doesn't mean I can't also have emotions, now does it?"

Cloud was about to reply, but something in Sephiroth's words made him hesitate and change his answer.

"'Have been'?" he repeated. "What do you mean, 'have been'? You can't just get up and leave SOLDIER, General."

Sephiroth's eyes became flint-like in an instant, pinning Cloud into silence with their intensity.

"Watch me, Strife," he parried, his tone deadly serious. "This is one order from Shinra I'm not going to follow, and if they take issue with that then they'll have to get their own hands dirty for once."

"Says the guy who's been Shinra's own right hand for almost his entire life," a new voice broke in, and both men looked over to see Aeris walking towards them. "I give you a week, tops, before you're following at the President's heels again."

Cloud was worried for a moment that the air between the pair might spontaneously combust as the tension in the atmosphere flared sharply for a moment, but it was shattered just as quickly by the sound of Sephiroth chuckling.

"Do you really have that little faith in me, Aeris?" he asked probingly, continuing when she didn't reply. "Regardless of where my loyalties have been placed in the past, you can't deny that they've been unflagging—"

"Unflaggingly stupid," the Cetra jibed from around a mouthful of eggs, but the General continued as if she'd never spoken.

"—in their resolution. I've decided to disobey this order, and that's all there is to it. You can either come with me, or languish here until the Turks come and claim you themselves. Your choice."

Aeris swallowed her bite of food and regarded her old friend carefully, her gaze level and unflinching.

"Do you honestly expect me to believe that you wouldn't turn around and accept an offer of reconciliation from them, Sephiroth, if it meant saving your skin?"

"Yes."

"What about if it meant saving mine?"

This question gave the General pause as his eyes widened slightly, and Aeris' mouth twitched up into a bitter smirk that was tinged with something else Cloud couldn't quite place.

"I thought so," the Cetra spoke softly. "I'll go with you, Sephiroth, as far as I have to," she continued, "but you have to promise me that you won't do anything stupidly noble for my sake, like you used to. I can pull my own weight, you know."

The General was silent for a few heartbeats, but then he chuckled again, and this time the sound was unfettered by any negative emotion.

"I never said you couldn't, Aeris," he replied, and she allowed herself a small smile before turning to face Cloud, who couldn't have been feeling more tense in that moment if he'd tried.

"And how are you this morning, Cloud?" she asked pleasantly, and the blond-haired SOLDIER took a moment to get his tongue working again before speaking.

"Couldn't sleep," he answered simply, and Aeris' expression became suffused with sympathy.

"Sorry to hear that," she began, but Cloud just waved her off.

"Don't be. We got used to being woken up in the middle of the night by bombing raids during the War; I can handle running on no sleep just fine."

Aeris could sense something off with Cloud's demeanor, but chose not to press it. Sephiroth, unconcerned with the delicacy of the situation, broke the silence bluntly.

"Someone on your mind, Strife?"

The other warrior made no reply, instead rising to his feet and cracking his stiff back before turning around and beginning to walk towards the edge of the plateau. Aeris shot Sephiroth a hard glance as she bolted down the rest of her meal and rose as well, but the General just shrugged it off. He knew how closed up Cloud could get when there were no enemies for him to go out and hack to pieces on the battlefield, and if no one pushed him the guy was going to get ulcers and kill himself with low self-esteem.

* * *

The sun just was rising as Tifa Lockhart and Rufus Shinra stepped out of the small helicopter that had flown them up into Nibelheim, the supersonic jet ride that had helped them hop continents in record time beforehand now nothing more than a blurry memory in Tifa's rattled and sleep-deprived mind. She was beyond nervous about going anywhere near something that had to do with Hojo's twisted experiments, and from what little information Rufus had told the assembled Turks earlier that night, Vincent Valentine stood as one of his most notorious.

At least, she thought with a small smile as the pair walked up the curved path and paused before the door, she'd been allowed to bring along Sephiroth's legendary sword Masamune as a means of protection. In actuality, it had only been permitted because it needed to be returned to Sephiroth once he was rescued, but Tifa was going to take every perk she could get. Hopefully, Sephiroth wouldn't mind someone else using his personal weapon.

Suddenly, the fear Tifa felt at the image of an angry Sephiroth almost dwarfed the fear of digging through the dirty secrets of Hojo's past.

"Are you all right, Tifa?"

The shock of hearing Rufus Shinra expressing concern for her wellbeing snapped Tifa out of her anxious thoughts, and the Turk looked over at her superior.

"Yeah," she answered with completely false confidence she prayed didn't sound hollow. "I'm fine."

"Good to hear that," the heir answered, his voice back to completely detached. "If I get injured because you're not focused, I'm leaving you here on the way back to Midgar."

Tifa nodded sharply and took one last breath in as Rufus kicked the door open, the duo's armaments consisting of little more than the sheathed sword clutched in Tifa's hand and the shotgun held in Rufus'. As they walked through the decrepit hallways, the Shinra heir spoke a warning to the Turk.

"I'm fairly sure Hojo booby-trapped the safe that contains the key to the basement's cellar," he said, "so be ready to kill whatever freak he might have put there to guard it."

A frown set itself on Tifa's face at the news, her grip tightening unconsciously on Masamune.

"And you waited until now to tell me this because…?" she grit out, but Rufus was utterly unfazed by her tone.

"Because it would have done nothing more than make you even more agitated had I mentioned it earlier," he said matter-of-factly, pausing to make sure that his weapon was loaded and primed as the pair came to the small room that housed the safe in question. Rather than try to open the combination lock, Rufus slammed the butt of his shotgun into the weak part of the safe's door agani and again until it gave way with a satisfying groan as the metal bent and warped. The two of them waited for a few beats for something to happen... and when nothing did, Tifa just shrugged, reached in and grabbed the key.

"That wasn't so bad," she mused, pocketing the key and turning back to face the door. As if on some perverse cue, the door was ripped away along with most of the wall surrounding it, revealing a large creature that was half red, half purple and completely freakish.

"You were saying, Tifa?" Rufus half-growled in anger as he aimed his shotgun at the beast and emptied both barrels. Tifa used the respite she had been given while the monstrosity staggered backwards to draw Masamune from its sheath, pausing for a few precious moments to get used to the weight of the gargantuan blade before hoisting it, getting a running start and leaping toward her inhuman target.

* * *

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**A/N: **I'm not dead! Just really busy as of late, and some parts of the scenes in this chapter wouldn't come out right for the longest time. I was going to continue this chapter past the cliffhanger originally, but the ending point I originally had in mind wasn't as tense and made the rest of the chapter kind of drag. That, and I need to give you guys a reason to come back, no?

Hint, hint: That reason is Vincent being a badass.

And if any of you guys are thinking "But Jazz, how can it possibly make sense that Tifa's a Turk? My mind has been blown!".... it'll be explained. And since Sephiroth hasn't burned down Nibelheim, technically Tifa hasn't had her "I hate Shinra" moment. But trust me, her reasons for becoming a Turk will be explained in due time.

**And finally,** if any of you are wondering about the chapter's title, it's Italian for "Never Trust the Turks." It's used in a slightly different context in the movie I borrowed it from, but I figured it fit quite well here, at least from Sephiroth's and Cloud's side of things.


	5. The Enemy of My Enemy

**Anabasis**

**Chapter 5: **The Enemy of My Enemy

* * *

Tifa decided that when she finally met Sephiroth face-to-face, the first thing she was going to ask him was how in the _hell_ he had ever managed to swing this sword with one hand. The Turk had heard stories whispered around Shinra Corporation's ranks to that effect, as testaments to Sephiroth's immense strength, and had never doubted them; after all, Sephiroth was as much a myth as he was a man at this point. But now, as she actually held the great Masamune in her hands and swung it forward as hard as she could, Tifa was seriously doubting that even Sephiroth could have used this thing with just one hand.

The tempered steel of the blade bit hard into the flesh of the creature before her, carving a sizeable gash across the front of its face and causing it to screech with rage in a voice that sent a shiver lancing down Tifa's spine. A red tentacle lashed out and slammed into her side with impunity, sending the Turk flying backwards. Correcting her center of gravity in midair, Tifa managed to hit the ground on both feet and slide backwards only slightly, letting a short hiss slip from through her teeth as one of her knees was scraped raw by the dry wood floor. Pushing herself up off of one knee and forcing her discomfort into the back of her mind, Tifa tried to lift Masamune up again only to be greeted by a blindingly sharp stab of pain in her left arm. Quickly testing the bone to make sure it wasn't broken, the Turk breathed a small sigh of relief as she noted that it was still in one piece. Nevertheless, using the long-sword as a weapon was now out of the question.

But that didn't mean she couldn't use it as something else instead.

Rufus Shinra loved a good fight every now and then to stay sharp, but a do-or-die shootout with some alien monstrosity was definitely going above and far beyond what could be considered 'good'. The next time he saw Hojo, the heir swore that he was going to grind both the crazy scientist's funding and paycheck into dust. Jamming two more shells into the barrels of his shotgun and ignoring the searing pain pressing on his thumbs as the metal of the weapon began to overheat, Rufus emptied another volley of hot lead at the creature. This round finally struck a solid blow, taking out one of the monster's vulnerable eyes. It roared and flailed, but Rufus rolled quickly out of the way to avoid the blindly grasping purple hand that sprang out at him.

Reaching hastily into his jacket for more shells, Rufus barked out a terse curse as he came up empty. Shifting his hand over to the jacket's other pocket, he quickly withdrew two small spheres of green Materia. He'd hoped not to have to use these as a last-ditch protection measure, but this overgrown mutant bastard wasn't really giving him any other choice. Right as he was about to chuck one of the orbs up at the enraged monster, karma decided to not be such a raging bitch for once and lent him a hand. Rufus saw from out of the corner of his eye that Tifa had chosen to improvise a bit, repurposing Masamune and using it as a vaulting pole rather than a sword. After getting a running start, she had planted the blade into the ground point-down and trusted in the blade to be able to bend without breaking. Her faith had apparently been rewarded in spades, as the Turk was now arcing through the air on a collision course with the monster's only good eye. She twisted at the last possible moment, converting her momentum into a crushing roundhouse kick. The strike connected with a nauseating _squish_, and Rufus seized the advantage.

"Tifa!" he called out, catching her attention long enough to throw both of the Materia up to her.

The Turk caught the spheres and tossed them into the creature's now-empty eye socket, briefly crouching on the bridge of its nose before pushing off backwards in a graceful flip. She landed on the floor again just as two bolts of lightning shot down through the ceiling and pierced the monster's head from the top down, frying it and all but cleaving it clean in two. As it collapsed onto the floor and began to melt down into a puddle of multicolored ooze, Tifa pinched her nose shut against the reeking smell and looked down with disgust at the goop that covered her leg.

"I just got these shoes cleaned, too," she groaned, before her arm flared again in pain and cut her complaint short. The beast's tentacle must have been home to some kind of venom, because the Turk saw with widening, horrified eyes that the flesh on her wounded arm was beginning to turn necrotic.

"What the fuck?" she exclaimed, feeling her body going into shock despite her efforts to keep aware. Rufus was at her side a moment later, holding another orb of green Materia in the light.

"Use this," he said, and Tifa gently took the small sphere of Cure Materia and pressed it up against her wound with a wince. It began to glow, and the flesh that had rotted away began to return bit by bit until the effected area had been entirely healed.

"That was the only one I had," the Shinra heir said evenly as he readjusted his jacket, walking away like nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, "so don't screw up like that again, because I won't be able to bail you out."

Tifa shot her boss' back a withering look, but jogged to catch up with him after a moment all the same. The pair quickly found their way down into the basement, using the key to unlock the cellar door and venturing even further down into the catacomb-like foundations of the Mansion.

"Jeez, it's creepy down here," Tifa spoke after a few moments, trying to break the uneasy silence. "Why do you think anyone would have chosen to exile themselves here, chief?"

"Hojo didn't get into the specifics," Rufus answered. "But if you want to know, you can ask Vincent when we find him. Whether or not he answers you is another question entirely, though. From what I remember from the stories I heard as a kid, he was a withdrawn person; I doubt the years have mellowed him any."

They finally came to the door they were looking for and Rufus shouldered it open, chuckling darkly when all he saw in the room were coffins.

"Looks like he has a pretty macabre sense of humor, at least," the heir noted dryly, while Tifa busied herself with trying to figure out which coffin contained Vincent Valentine. After being greeted by a few eerily-grinning skulls, the Turk finally came to a coffin that seemed to be… snoring.

"I think this is the one, chief," she called out. Rufus came over, paused for a moment to listen to the uneven sound coming from the coffin and then proceeded to unceremoniously kick the lid off of the top of the long box and onto the dusty floor. It landed with a clatter, and the debris kicked up by the disturbance kept Vincent's face obscured for a few moments, but when it finally came into the dull light Tifa gasped in surprise. She had been expecting to see the face of an old man in his 50s or 60s, but instead Vincent looked to be about the same age as Rufus. Messy black hair covered about half of his face, his eyes were closed and a dark red cape separated his body from the bottom of the coffin.

The one visible eye suddenly snapped open, revealing itself to be an arresting shade of garnet. Tifa tried to spring backwards as Vincent sat up sharply and reached forward with one hand, but the Turk wasn't fast enough. She soon felt the air being squeezed out of her bit by bit as a cold, pitiless hand closed around her throat.

"Who are you?"

The voice was as cold and sharp as the eye, hinting at anger and emotion barely being restrained beneath Vincent's otherwise placid expression.

"Take it easy, Valentine," Rufus' even voice spoke out as the two barrels of his shotgun were pressed against the side of Vincent's head. "She's with me. Back off, unless you'd prefer your brains to be on the floor."

Vincent's gaze moved over to look Rufus in the eye sidelong, staring at him for a few beats before relinquishing his grip on Tifa's neck. Rufus began to lower the weapon, but before it had gone all the way down to his side Vincent's hand struck out again and grabbed the gun. He deftly wrested it from Rufus' grip, spinning the shotgun around around so that the barrels were pointing right at the Shinra heir's forehead. Vincent had his finger wrapped around the trigger and made to pull it, until he noticed something off with the weight of the gun and stopped. Pushing the barrels up and away from the stock, the former Turk saw the empty holes and he frowned.

"You were bluffing?"

Rufus smiled as the gun was lowered away from his face.

"Of course."

Vincent closed his eyes and took a moment to move the hair away from the other side of his face, before opening them again and looking at Tifa again with both eyes keen and slightly narrowed.

"You must be a Turk," he said shortly, looking over her distinctive blue suit, "Which would make you Rufus Shinra," Vincent continued, looking back over at the Shinra heir standing confident in his slightly dirtied white suit.

"Am I wrong?"

"Not at all," Rufus answered, his smile remaining in his voice as he spoke. "I see you've still kept track of time during your isolation."

"All too closely," Vincent parried, his expression hard. "Minutes to you pass as days for me. But I assume you didn't come all the way here to exchange pleasantries, Shinra, so hurry up and get to the point."

"Very well," the Shinra heir spoke calmly. "I know where Lucrecia Crescent is, Valentine."

Vincent's eyes shot open shock at the pronouncement, and the former Turk had to take a few moments to get himself back to an emotionless equilibrium.

"You're bluffing again, Shinra."

"Am I?" Rufus parried smoothly. "Everyone who's been injected with Jenova cells can be tracked by the particular kind of radiation those cells give off, Valentine. It took a while for Lucrecia's tag to pop back up on our radar, but she finally did not too long ago."

"Assuming you're telling the truth," Vincent replied after a few moments of silence, "I can also assume you'd want something from me in return for telling me where she is."

"Yes."

Vincent didn't speak for several moments, but when he did his tone was decidedly threatening.

"Does Hojo know about this?"

Tifa heard Vincent spit the scientist's name like it was poison, and could only wonder if their history went further than him being subjected to Hojo's insane experiments.

"He does," Rufus admitted, and Vincent tensed noticeably in anger before the Shinra heir held out a hand and continued. "Rest assured, however, that I've arranged for him to work through a substantial number of projects for the time being, enough to keep his focus away from Lucrecia. And if I had to guess, he sees her as a specimen that's outlived its usefulness anyway."

At this point, Tifa had gotten her second wind and screwed up the courage to break the incredibly tense silence that had fallen in between the two men standing before her.

"So," she began, slightly hesitant, but holding her ground as both men turned to look at her, "who exactly is Lucrecia Crescent?"

"A former researcher on Hojo's 'Jenova Project'," Vincent explained. "A kind, beautiful woman."

"She also happens to be Sephiroth's mother," Rufus cut in, unmoved by the death glare Vincent sent in his direction. "But enough reminiscing; I need your help with something, Valentine."

"What is it?"

"We think there's a situation about to emerge in Wutai," Tifa stepped in for her boss, worried that if Rufus and Vincent kept talking only one of them was going to walk out of this room. "We need your help taking care of it."

"What kind of situation," Vincent pressed, "Miss…?"

"Lockhart," Tifa answered, "but you can just call me Tifa. It's a simple search and rescue mission; assuming that we can stay out of the military's way, it shouldn't be an issue."

"And who else besides Wutai's military is going to be involved?" Vincent parried. "If the mission was as simple as you say, the Turks ought to be enough to complete it successfully without my help."

"The other three active Turks are going to be moving to assist in creating the 'situation' shortly," Rufus rejoined, "under orders from my father."

Vincent was silent for several moments as he considered the offer, clearly weighing the pain of isolation with the shame of working for Shinra again as the gears turned behind his garnet eyes. When he finally spoke, it was in the form of a question that sounded a lot more like a demand.

"Will our path cross with Hojo's at some point?"

Rufus smiled, inwardly relieved to see that he had won this psychological duel. Vincent Valentine was clearly no one to be trifled with.

"I can see to it that they will intersect, if that's what you want," the Shinra heir answered, and Vincent's eyes lit up slightly with the barest hint of vicious satisfaction before fading back into cold detachment.

"Very well," Vincent said as his red cape flapped lightly behind him in the faintly-blowing, fetid air of the catacombs. "We have a deal, Shinra. But just know that if you break it, I will kill you."

"I would expect nothing less from a Turk," Rufus replied with a smirk. As Vincent tensed at the jibe, Tifa could only wonder if they would be able to make it all the way to Wutai without one of them winding up in a body bag.

* * *

Aeris had decided to ride shotgun on Cloud's chocobo for the trek back to Wutai proper, a gesture Sephiroth took to mean that she was still pissed off at him for walking out on her the night before. Cloud seemed to find his position as accessory to the gesture discomforting, but said nothing to Aeris about it. Sephiroth couldn't help but laugh to himself; at this point, he wasn't sure if Cloud was more intimidated by him or by Aeris.

"So, Sephiroth," the Cetra spoke as the sun began to set, finally giving up on the silent treatment, "do you have any kind of plan for getting us back to the mainland from here?"

"We'll go out the same way I came in," the General answered simply. "by ship."

"But there aren't any ships that run directly from Wutai to Midgar…" Cloud began to reply, before he realized what was going on and he grimaced at the situation he'd managed to blunder into.

"We're not going back to Midgar, are we?"

"That would be really counter-productive, Cloud," Aeris spoke with a light chuckle from behind him. "Going into the lion's den isn't exactly the best way to keep the lion from noticing you, after all."

The blond-haired SOLDIER just sighed, spurring on the chocobo beneath him and trying not to feel too angry with his two companions for roping them into their planned flight from Shinra.

"And there goes my pension," he quipped, but there was sadness underneath the joke: Cloud had been hoping to use his military pay as seed money for a house somewhere out in the country, away from all the noise and pollution and crowds of the city. He highly doubted, though, that Shinra would be very interested in paying someone who had aided a traitor and a fugitive. Which also made him a criminal in turn, come to think of it, and brought a very perplexing question to the forefront of Cloud's mind.

Where, exactly, were three traitorous fugitives supposed to go to find refuge when the people they were hiding from controlled almost the entire planet?

* * *

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**A/N:** So yeah, I figured I'd make up for the lack of updates as of late with two updates in relatively quick succession. Hope you enjoyed the chapter, and **please review**; it really means a lot and inspires me to write, which means we both win.

If Vincent struck you as a bit talkative this chapter, don't worry; I'm not turning him into a chatterbox. He just had to talk for that scene to work at all, and so he did. But now that his introduction is over, he'll be back to being his normally brooding, reclusive and generally awesome self.


	6. Shooting Stars

**Anabasis**

**Chapter 6**: Shooting Stars

* * *

The trio of travelers had wanted to make it all the way back to Wutai before the sun had set, but the Chocobo they were riding had other ideas in mind. Sephiroth's mount was still in fine shape, but the combined burden of both Cloud and Aeris had worn the stamina of the other Chocobo down to nothing. Sephiroth had taken the precaution of bringing some food along that he'd taken from the merchant camp just before they'd left, but there hadn't been enough space to include bedrolls as well.

"I'd be fine with sleeping out here in the open," Aeris mused, "if it weren't for the scorpions. I'd rather not wake up to a fatally poisonous sting, myself."

"Agreed," Sephiroth said, turning to Cloud. "You stay here with Aeris, Strife; I'm going to see if I can't find a cave, or some other kind of shelter."

Cloud nodded shortly, biting back a yawn.

"Sounds like a plan."

The General got back on his Chocobo and rode off, leaving Cloud and Aeris alone to watch the tail end of the sunset as it scattered blood-red and deep orange across the cloudless sky.

"I'd forgotten how beautiful these were," the Cetra spoke, her voice bittersweet and wistful. "Being locked up in a lab doesn't leave much time for things like this."

"Yeah, I bet," Cloud said, sinking into a cross-legged position on the ground. Aeris mirrored him a moment later, and silence settled between the pair for a few heartbeats before Aeris decided to break it.

"Cloud," she began slowly, "can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," he answered with a small smile. "What is it?"

"I know this is going to sound weird, but… Sephiroth—what's he like?"

The SOLDIER's expression shifted to one of surprise at the question, and he raised a curious eyebrow.

"What do you mean?" he asked back. "Didn't you grow up with the guy?"

"Well, yeah," Aeris parried, slightly thrown off, "but when we were talking yesterday, I could tell something had changed. SOLDIER changed him. The War here changed him. The Sephiroth I remember is practically a kid, Cloud; he's probably worlds away from what he used to be like."

"And what was that, exactly?" Cloud pressed, and the Cetra got a slightly faraway look in her eyes, a smile spreading across her face as she replied.

"A strong, quiet, idiotically noble, reserved, terse, incredibly charismatic jerk, and the most loyal friend I could have hoped for," Aeris said, and Cloud chuckled.

"That sounds about right," he said. "People like him don't change too easily, Aeris… I wouldn't worry about him leaving you behind."

Cloud got the sense from the way that Aeris suddenly busied herself with the folds of her long skirt that she was gearing up to get to the actual heart of her question, and he was proven right a few moments later.

"He might not have changed much personality-wise," she conceded, "but what about in other ways? Is there… someone else meaningful in his life?"

The SOLDIER had to fight hard to keep from smiling at Aeris' insecurity, but kept a straight face as he spoke again.

"I asked him that question once, actually. It was right after a really vicious, entrenched skirmish, and the men were blowing off steam in the bars and whorehouses. Sephiroth and I were the only ones in our division who kept out of the brothels; he knew I had someone waiting for me at home in Midgar, but I assumed he was a lone wolf.

"'General,' I asked him, 'what're you doing out here? Don't you want to go blow off some steam?' And he looks at me and says—"

"'If Aeris knew I'd been in one of those places, she'd snap Masamune in half and castrate me with it', I believe were my exact words, Strife."

A level, but amused voice turned both Cloud's and Aeris' heads around, and they saw Sephiroth standing behind them with his arms crossed over his chest, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"General," Cloud greeted, rising to his feet smoothly and taking Sephiroth's eavesdropping in stride with remarkable grace. "You find a place to settle up?"

The ex-SOLDIER nodded, motioning with his head to the northeast.

"It's a cave, about half a klick that way."

"I'll go ahead and keep watch," Cloud said, thinly veiling a smile in his words as he walked over towards Sephiroth's Chocobo, pausing for a moment before vaulting into the saddle and riding off into the distance. As Sephiroth took a seat next to Aeris, the last rays of the sunset vanished, ceding the sky at last to the moon and the stars.

"I can't believe you thought I'd gone off and found someone to replace you, Aeris," Sephiroth said after a few moments of peaceful silence, and the Cetra next to him just laughed.

"I can't believe you thought I'd castrate you with Masamune," she parried, a wicked grin playing around her lips. "That sword's way too nice to use for something like that. I'd just use my boot instead."

"Funny," the General deadpanned, but with a smile on his face that Aeris couldn't see, her eyes too busy watching the stars twinkling in the sky. "So how about we just call it even, and forget that any of those things were ever said?"

"That could work," she mumbled distractedly, before gasping in surprise and pointing up at the sky.

"Oh, look! A shooting star! Make a wish, Sephiroth!"

The General looked up and saw the tail end of the streaking light arcing across the sky. As he made his own wish, though, he was much more interested in the look of childlike wonder that shined on Aeris' face in the starlight. How she could ever have kept even a shred of her innocence after being held in Hojo's lab for so long, Sephiroth would never know. It was a small miracle at the very least, but perhaps the Cetra were more predisposed to miracles than normal humans.

"Sephiroth? Are you all right?"

The question snapped him sharply out of his thoughts, and he blinked once before his vision cleared and he saw Aeris looking at him quizzically.

"Yes," he said, returning his eyes to the stars, "I'm fine."

Aeris didn't buy that for a second, but she was enjoying this moment too much to risk breaking it by forcing the issue. She sat next to her oldest friend in silence, her head resting partly on his shoulder while she looked upwards at the sky, until her neck began to cramp and she frowned. Her expression didn't stay scrunched for long, though, as Aeris thought of a way to ease her neck and improve her view at the same time. Scooting forward and slightly away from Sephiroth, she turned and stretched out, winding up with her head resting in his lap as she looked up. His head tilted down to look at her, and Aeris silently marveled at the way the starlight illuminated his long, silver hair as it framed his face.

"I like this view better," she said with satisfaction, and Sephiroth smiled. It wasn't a guarded smile, either, or a weary one like those he flashed just to keep up appearances when she'd cracked a joke in the past. It was a real, unfettered smile, and it made a kindred one grow wide on Aeris' face. The last of the Cetra closed her eyes and sighed, content to let the warmth and the soft desert breeze carry her gently off to sleep.

Sephiroth had forgotten what it felt like, to have someone with whom he could be completely open, and whom he knew would be completely open with him in turn. In the army, and even in his SOLDIER days, everyone had kept him at a minimum of arm's length. Cloud had come to be considered a friend in Sephiroth's mind, but even the blue-eyed SOLDIER had always seemed to see Sephiroth as something more than a normal person, either because of his higher position in the chain of command or because of his talent on the battlefield. Genesis and Angeal he had seen more as competitors than as actual comrades, and they were both dead now anyway. Whatever the reasons, the General had always been isolated, either by his status or his reputation.

But with Aeris, none of that mattered. With her, he could just be who he was, underneath all the layers of emotional and physical scars, and it was normal. She would never look at him oddly for laughing, or for fidgeting or whistling like he sometimes did when he was bored. Sephiroth was sure that she alone could completely understand him and all of his issues, and he would never stop being thankful for that small bit of mercy from the Fates, who had done so much else to cause him pain.

But now, as he sat here under the constellations with Aeris sleeping next to him, absolutely secure and smiling in her dreams, Sephiroth realized that he would have chosen to repeat all of his life's torments over again, if it meant being able to experience moments of happiness as pure as this. His hand came to rest gently on the top of Aeris' head, and he slowly moved a stray bang of light brown hair out of her eyes with delicacy that seemed impossible coming from him.

**_Kill._**

The single word boomed powerfully inside Sephiroth's head, echoing harsh and shrill in his skull for several beats after it had subsided. The General's hands flew up to his forehead as he clutched it in agony, scrambling to try and figure out what the hell had just happened while at the same time suddenly finding himself wrestling with an incredibly powerful urge to butcher the thing closest to him.

Aeris.

The last of the Cetra, who was still sleeping, utterly oblivious to the danger she was in outside of shifting slightly in her sleep. All thoughts of tenderness and kindness were shoved brutally to the corners of Sephiroth's mind, and he felt himself being swallowed up by an irrepressibly strong desire to tear, rend, destroy and conquer. His hands tensed into claw-like shapes against his head, slowly balling into tight fists as he strove desperately to suppress the urges that had surged up from out of nowhere.

After what seemed like half an hour of bitter fighting back and forth in his mind, Sephiroth finally felt the impulse give ground and fade away. Drawing in breath in as quiet a gasp as he could to avoid waking up Aeris, the General tried to come to grips with what had just happened to him and failed utterly. He had no idea what that voice was, or where it had come from, but he could feel nonetheless that something had changed inside of him. It was a small change, a subtle one, and the kind of change Sephiroth knew was the most dangerous. He felt for a moment like the world was spinning away from him; for the first time in decades, the General was completely out of his depth.

But then he felt something stir against him, mumbling softly. Looking down, Sephiroth saw Aeris still sleeping, still safe; still alive. Sighing in relief, he knew that he had to get moving, to try and banish the specter of whatever had just slid so maliciously into his mind. Rising slowly to his feet, Sephiroth raised Aeris at the same time in both arms and walked over to Cloud's Chocobo, that had begun to doze off. It woke up and gave a weak wark of protest, but seemed to calm down once Sephiroth put Aeris in the saddle. He got on in front of her, grabbing the reins and making sure that her arms were wrapped securely around his waist before setting off at a moderate trot. It would take longer to get back to the cave this way, but Sephiroth wanted to make sure she didn't wake up on the way; he knew she would ask him what had gotten him so tense, and that wasn't a conversation he felt like having right now.

Besides, the soft sound of her breathing in and out was too soothing and peaceful to interrupt anyway.

* * *

Aeris opened her eyes as soon as she felt herself cross the boundary between wakefulness and sleep, smiling as she found herself standing amidst the flowing, fluctuating green strands of spiritual energy that made up the Lifestream of the Planet. She would always come here rather than spending her time asleep dreaming; it was much more calming and pleasing to hear the voices of her ancestors and kin, the spirits of the Cetra.

"Hello, Aeris."

Her smile widened as she heard that one voice in particular, the voice of her mother, Ifalna. But Aeris' smile faltered as soon as the figure of her mother appeared in a pale shadow of her likeness. All of the kindness was gone from her face, replaced by cold, steely seriousness.

"Mom?" Aeris pressed, immediately concerned by the change. "Mom, what's wrong?"

Ifalna said nothing for a few moments, but when she spoke her voice was grave.

"You have to get away from him, Aeris," she said. "You have to run far, far away from him, and never look back."

Aeris' brow creased in confusion, and she was annoyed by her mother's vagueness.

"What do you mean, Mom?" she asked. "Get away from who?"

"From Sephiroth, Aeris," Ifalna clarified harshly. "From the scion of Jenova."

"And why would I want to do that?" Aeris shot back, her green eyes flaring briefly with anger. "I don't care if he has Jenova's DNA in him or not, Mom; he's someone very important to me."

"And do you think Jenova cares at all what you think or feel, child?" Ifalna spat back, and her daughter recoiled slightly at the acidity in her words. "I warned you this day would come when you were a child, but you didn't listen to me then and you're going to pay for your stubbornness if you don't come to your senses and listen to me here and now.

"Jenova has begun to move, and she's going to use her puppet to kill you."

Aeris felt a small spark of fear race through her and the declaration, but her anger quickly trumped it.

"He's not a 'puppet', Mom," she insisted sharply. "He's a human, one that just happens to have been injected with some of Jenova's DNA."

"Is that really how you feel, Aeris?" Ifalna parried, and her daughter nodded resolutely. "Very well, then," the ghost of the Cetra sighed, waving her hand.

"See for yourself how much of a puppet he is."

The swirling strands of energy before the pair coalesced into a solid whole, shimmering and shifting before becoming a wide, dark screen. It was blank for a few heartbeats, but then Aeris had to strangle a gasp as the image of Sephiroth's face came into view, directly above her sleeping form and contorted in agony. His eyes were closed at first, but when they opened Aeris felt her heart breaking at the anguish, confusion and hopelessness she saw in them. But beneath all of that, she saw something else that gave her hope once again.

"He's fighting it," she said, quietly but with assurance. "He's pushing back at her."

"It's a losing battle, Aeris," Ifalna countered. "Even if he does win this time, Jenova will keep pushing and prodding him until he breaks. His fall is inevitable, and when it comes he's going to take you with him."

But Aeris gave no ground, her eyes bright with determination.

"That's a risk I'm willing to take."

"Why?" Ifalna plead on last time, pained at seeing her only child walking so blindly towards her own death. "Do you really think your faith is strong enough to overpower Jenova?"

"You clearly had enough faith in my father that he wouldn't turn out to be like Hojo," Aeris shot back, and her mother flinched.

"That's not fair, Aeris," she said. "Your father was a decent man, a good man—"

"And so is Sephiroth," Aeris replied firmly, cutting her mother off. "Look."

Mother and daughter watched as Sephiroth finally overcame the pressure of Jenova and gathered himself together once again, picking Aeris' body up and carrying her gently over to the waiting Chocobo. Aeris felt her spirits lift at the sight, but Ifalna remained unconvinced.

"He may have won this time, child," she said, "but the next time will be just as sudden, and twice as fierce."

"Sephiroth did it once," her daughter parried with a smile, "and he can do it again. I know it."

"Then I have failed you," Ifalna uttered lowly as the Lifestream began to fade away around her,

"And I am sorry, my child."

Aeris almost opened her eyes as she reconnected with her physical body and the cold wind blew against it, but then she felt the comforting warmth of Sephiroth's body settle in front of her and she smiled contentedly against him, her grip tightening around his waist as the Chocobo carried them back to their shelter for the night.

* * *

......

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**A/N**: Well, that came out rather nicely, if I may say so myself. I wanted to give Aeris and Sephiroth a warm and fuzzy moment before everything goes to hell, which it will soon enough.

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and please review; reviews are fantastic and awesome and most importantly, they keep me writing.

Oh, and if anyone's a bit confused by the word 'klick', it's military slang for 'kilometer'. A half of a klick would be roughly 500 yards.

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	7. Precipice

**Anabasis**

**Chapter 7:** Precipice

* * *

At times like this, as the three of them were situated in an empty shipping container on a supply boat traveling to Wutai, Tifa Lockhart was fairly certain she would never completely understand what went on in Rufus Shinra's head. One moment, he was perfectly content to fly a high-speed jet from Midgar to Nibelheim, and the next he insisted on traveling west to Wutai in about as primitive a way as was imaginable. She could understand the need for discretion and Rufus' desire to keep as low a profile as possible, but there were ways to stay inconspicuous without having to resort to this.

Hell, hadn't half of her training as a Turk been devoted specifically to stealth and subterfuge?

But maybe she was just feeling antsy because there was no one to talk to; Rufus was stone-cold asleep and Vincent was just sitting there, eyes open but focused on nothing and dead silent. Tifa hadn't expected anyone that'd been through what Vincent had to be a chatterbox or anything, but some small talk would have been nice.

"Why is someone like you in the Turks?"

The question came out of nowhere, and Tifa's surprise at the simultaneously offhanded yet piercing tone of Vincent's voice almost made her yelp. As it was, she took a few breaths to get her bearings back and looked over at the stoic… whatever he was, her garnet eyes locking with his own burnt amber ones.

"Why would you ask that kind of question?" she parried back defensively. Vincent gave the faintest of shrugs in response, a barely-discernable ripple flowing through the shoulders of his red mantle.

"You don't seem to me like the sort of person who'd be comfortable with kidnapping and murder," Vincent said. "Your eyes are too kind."

Tifa was unsure whether or not that was intended as a compliment; Vincent's tone made it hard to detect even a shred of warmth in any of his words. All the same, she had finally gotten some conversation going, and even if it was personal it was worth maintaining.

"I don't handle the Black Ops side of things," she answered as casually as she could, trying not to think of the days Reno and Rude would come back wearing bloodied black gloves and knock back a half a bottle of whisky to forget about the mission. "I just do the scouting for prospective SOLDIER candidates."

"You say that like it's a good thing," Vincent replied with a trace of scorn to his voice, his eyes narrowing slightly. Tifa felt her jaw clench at the implied condemnation, but she held her ground.

"And why wouldn't it be?" she asked pointedly. "A lot of the people we wind up picking come from disadvantageous backgrounds, and the monthly stipend for a SOLDIER even in peacetime is more than most of them make in years of hard labor—"

"Do you have any idea what the survival rate for the Mako and Jenova cell infusion process is, Tifa?" Vincent cut her off, and the Turk found herself unable to come up with an answer. Come to think of it, she'd never been privy to that bit of information; the Turks facilitated the delivery of candidates, nothing more. It wasn't in the job description to ask questions, as Reno so often said.

"Less than five percent. And even then, mental instability in the survivors to some degree is the norm."

Vincent's cold voice cut through Tifa's thoughts like a blade, sending a shiver racing down her spine as Cloud's words from so long ago rose up from a deep, carefully-guarded corner of her thoughts.

"_I'm going to join SOLDIER. I'm gonna be the best there is, Tifa; just you watch!"_

He'd gone through the SOLDIER indoctrination and been shipped off to Wutai before Tifa had joined up with the Turks; she'd followed his battles during the War incredibly closely, but not once had she heard if the SOLDIER program had done anything to his emotional stability.

What would he be like now, when she saw him again? Would he still even be Cloud?

"I see you're beginning to understand," Vincent broke back in, his tone offering no consolation to the shaken Turk. "Everything Shinra touches is poisoned, Tifa; everything. Don't forget that."

She sat in silence for several moments, lost in the uncertainty Vincent had just opened her eyes to, until her eyes wandered over to Rufus' sleeping form and her peace of mind was salvaged by a memory.

* * *

_The beer kicked her bitterly in the back of the throat on the way down, but that was just fine; Tifa liked to view it as her own small penance for having to lie routinely to her father whenever he would ask about where the money was coming from to fund his treatments. She had to believe that he knew "working overtime at the Mako reactor" would never make this kind of money, but since he never pressed her that hard, Tifa had been able to get off with a white lie. _

_In truth, she'd been acting as a package-runner and part-time heavy for the local crime kingpin, paying for her father's treatments one sprained arm or carefully-placed threat at a time. She hated doing the work, but her old man's health was far more important than her own guilty conscience. And since Nibelheim was relatively small, her reputation on the underbelly soon leaked over into the daylight; Tifa found herself on the receiving end of far more evil eyes than she had expected. _

_It was just a good thing that Cloud wasn't here to see what she'd been reduced to._

"_Now, tell me something," a confident, amused voice broke in from over Tifa's shoulder. "What's a girl like you doing wasting her talents in a place like this?"_

"_Is that supposed to be a come-on?" she shot back acidly, taking another swig of her beer. "Get lost, I'm not interested."_

_The voice laughed, and Tifa was able to place it through her buzz as that of a young man's._

"_Oh, that's right; I'd totally forgotten you were Cloud Strife's childhood sweetheart. Forgive me, Miss Lockhart."_

_Tifa's head snapped around so hard at the mention of Cloud's name so unexpectedly that she nearly gave herself whiplash, her eyes wide with surprise and confusion._

"_How do you know Cloud?" she asked, blinking and trying to remember where she'd seen this guy's face before. The young man smiled, the white suit he was wearing spotless in the sunlight that filtered in through the windows._

"_He works for me, that's how," he answered. "Or at least, he works for my Company."_

_As Tifa finally put a name to the face before her, her eyes widened in shock and she had to force back a gasp._

"_You're—you're Rufus Shinra," she said incredulously, and the heir to the most powerful organization on the Planet chuckled._

"_I was waiting for that," he quipped. "I have a proposition for you, Miss Lockhart."_

_She was immediately suspicious; her mother had drilled into her head that something that was too good to be true usually was, after all. At the same time, hearing him out couldn't hurt._

"_And what could someone like you possibly want with a girl like me?" she asked with equal politeness. "And please, just call me Tifa."_

"_I've been keeping an eye on your… performance, let's say, here in Nibelheim. I have to say, I'm impressed."_

"_And how, exactly, have you been doing that?" Tifa asked, politeness overruled for the moment by curiosity. Rufus just shrugged, helping himself to a bottle of beer from behind the bar as the barman busied himself with cleaning glasses. _

"_That thug you work for serves as our man here in Nibelheim, Tifa," Rufus explained. "Shinra owns him, and they own his men. If we wanted to, we could give the word right now to have them all killed and they wouldn't live to see ten o'clock tonight."_

_Tifa swallowed her fear at the obvious implications of Rufus' words, forcing herself to stay focused._

"_So where does that put me?" she asked. "I hope you don't think you own me, too, Mister Shinra."_

"_Of course not," Rufus replied easily, "which brings me back, conveniently enough, to my proposition. I know how much your father's medical bills are increasing each month, Tifa; the pay you're getting from your underground work isn't going to cut it soon enough. _

"_Which is why I'd like to offer you a job, working with Shinra's General Affairs Department. Specifically, the Investigations Sector. You'd be working under me, and I'd have direct oversight over all of your assignments."_

"_What's the catch?" Tifa pressed with a raised eyebrow, and Rufus smiled._

"_Tseng was right," he mused, "you are a sharp one. The only catch I can see is that you'd have to move away from Nibelheim, to Shinra's HQ in Midgar."_

_Tifa felt her stomach tighten in knots at the prospect of leaving her father's side during his illness, but he would have her brothers for company—heavens knew they weren't busy working—and this way she would never have to worry about her father's health again, even if she wouldn't be able to see him for a while._

"_How much does this job pay, Mister Shinra?" Tifa said in one final show of skepticism, but the number Rufus whispered into her ear quickly obliterated what was left of her doubts. Working for the Company that more or less controlled the Planet definitely had its benefits._

_She packed her things that night, said goodbye to her family the next morning, and headed off to Midgar. She hadn't seen Nibelheim since that day, almost eight years ago._

* * *

"You're wrong, Vincent," Tifa countered with assurance, remembering the letter her father had sent her in the mail with his latest physical and a note telling her how proud he was of her. "Not everything they touch is poisoned. They helped me take care of my father when he was sick; without Shinra, he'd be a corpse next to my mother right now."

Vincent was silent for a few moments before he seemed to relent and close his eyes, slipping effortlessly into sleep.

"Well, it's good to know there's at least one person here who won't try to kill me the next time I decide to doze off," Rufus remarked dryly from his position lying on his back, and Tifa gave a small smile.

"Of course I wouldn't kill you, chief," she reassured him wryly. "You're my meal-ticket, after all."

"I'm glad you think so highly of me," he joked back, inwardly glad when he heard Tifa chuckle. They were going into potentially dicey territory, and the last thing he needed was for his principal bodyguard to be wallowing in angst.

"By the way, Tifa," Rufus continued, rolling over onto his side so that his back was to the Turk, "I wouldn't waste time fretting over Cloud, if I were you; I know Sephiroth, and there's no way he would let someone who wasn't of sound mind serve as his right hand man in wartime."

Tifa let her boss's words sink in and smiled as her eyes closed and she drifted off to sleep as well, exhaustion finally catching up to her.

_Well, Cloud,_ she thought, _you made your dream come true._

* * *

Cloud woke up with the sunrise, a habit he'd formed throughout his years of military service in Wutai alongside Sephiroth. The air in the cave was unexpectedly warm, the early tidings of a blisteringly hot day to come. After some quick stretches to get his blood flowing again, the SOLDIER turned to rouse Aeris and Sephiroth, stopping in his tracks as he saw that the General was already awake, and seemed to have been for some time. He stood leaning against the cave wall, an unusually troubled look on his face. Cloud had always known Sephiroth to be guarded with his emotions, and anything that had upset him to this degree had to be major.

"How long have you been up for, General?"

Sephiroth didn't look up from the ground as he replied, his green eyes glowing faintly with the light of mako.

"I didn't sleep."

Cloud noticed that his comrade was consciously avoiding looking in Aeris' direction as she slumbered peacefully on her bedroll, but knew better than to ask why.

"It's gonna be one of those days."

Sephiroth gave a strained chuckle at that; he knew just as well as Cloud how unforgiving the desert could be, and the other weight on his mind would only make things even more fatiguing.

"You have no idea."

Cloud left his friend to his brooding, fishing around in the bag of supplies for some food. While he busied himself with that, Aeris stirred, slowly opened one eye, groaned and resigned herself to another half-day's travel under the desert sun. Sitting up languorously, the Cetra sighed in satisfaction as the stiff joints in her back and shoulders shifted and resettled in a series of small pops. Rising all the way to her feet, Aeris walked out of the cave to greet the dawn with a smile before turning back around and facing her companions.

"Good morning, you two," she said warmly, her smile quickly turning into a straight line as she got nothing in return from Sephiroth and nothing more than a glorified grunt from Cloud as he finished his foraging.

"Boys," she grumbled, her frown only intensifying as she saw Sephiroth sulking in the corner.

Aeris knew exactly what he was thinking, and she also knew he was going to be like this all day if she didn't drag him out of his melancholy herself. Walking over determinedly, the Cetra stopped at arm's-length from her oldest friend and stared at him. She waited to speak until she was sure he had noticed her, and had switched from being distracted to purposefully ignoring her.

"You're blaming yourself for what happened last night, aren't you?" she said at last, her tone far less harsh than Sephiroth had been expecting, instead carrying an almost empathizing tone. Too bad she could never empathize with the loss of free will and control he had experienced at the hands of whomever that damn voice had belonged to.

"I knew it," Aeris continued with conviction, pausing for a moment to look back over her shoulder. "Cloud," she said politely, "could you give us a few minutes, please?"

As soon as the other warrior had left them alone, all courtesy vanished from her tone in an instant as Aeris rounded back on Sephiroth.

"Stop it," she said seriously. "Not only aren't you doing anyone any good by moping like this, if anything your emotional distress will just make the next attack even worse."

"What do you expect me to do, Aeris?" he countered sharply, finally bringing his eyes up to meet her own. "Do you have any idea what that felt like, to be so completely powerless? I almost—"

Sephiroth's reply was abruptly cut off by the last thing the General expected: a hard right hook to his jaw. As he got over his shock and turned his head back to look at Aeris, Sephiroth was even more surprised to see that her eyes were smoldering with anger, her fist still clenched tightly at her side.

"I can't believe you," she hissed, slowly forcing her hand to relax. "How could you even think that I have no idea what that feels like? What do you think it was like when Hojo experimented on me, Sephiroth? Do you think he let me walk around while he observed me from a distance? No! He strapped me to a table and tested my pain threshold!

"I don't know what it feels like to have something try to force you to do something you don't want to, but I can tell you that being completely immobile while someone breaks the bones in your body one by one, joint by joint, is a good way to feel pretty damn powerless!"

At this point tears were stinging the corners of Aeris' eyes, but she was too furious with Sephiroth's self-pity to care. The Cetra was sure Jenova would take advantage of any opening Sephiroth gave her, and the last thing Aeris wanted to see was her best friend destroying himself while that extraterrestrial bitch sat back and laughed.

She was jolted out of her thoughts as Sephiroth suddenly drew her into a light embrace, his voice regretful as he spoke.

"I should have known better than to patronize you, Aeris," he said gravely. "I'm sorry."

Aeris shuddered once briefly against him as she collected herself, before stepping back from Sephiroth and giving him a weary smile.

"Apology accepted," she said, before her expression became serious again. "This time, anyway. But ever get that depressed on me again, and I'll do more to your jaw than just bruising it. You got that?"

"I'd expect nothing less," the General replied with a small smile, before his expression, as well, became much more serious.

"What do you know about what happened last night?" he asked, clearly not willing to take 'no' for an answer.

Aeris sighed, taking a deep breath to steady herself and trying to think of how to put this without driving Sephiroth insane. He deserved to know the truth, and it was better that he heard it from her than as some skewed lie from Jenova herself.

"Her name is Jenova," the Cetra began after a few moments, "and she was the one responsible for the near-extinction of my people."

* * *

The trio of Turks stood outside the throne room of Godo's palatial pagoda, still clad in their signature blue suits and feeling quite uneasy.

"I don't like this," Reno broke the silence at last. "Something's twisted here, yo."

"Relax, Reno," Tseng spoke up, hoping he'd been able to keep his own doubt out of his voice. "I don't trust Kisaragi either, but he wouldn't be stupid enough to do anything to give us a reason to re-open hostilities against him, especially not right after losing a War."

"Godo wouldn't be that stupid, maybe," Rude joined in, "but I'm not so sure about that advisor of his. I could only catch bits and pieces of what they were saying in Wutai's native tongue, but it sounded bad for us. She's a snake if I've ever seen one, Tseng."

"Maybe so," the unofficial leader of the three replied calmly, recalling all-too-clearly the woman's sharp, dark eyes and the malicious aura they seemed to exude.

"But even so," Tseng continued, "our job isn't to worry about hypotheticals. We just have to wait until Sephiroth, Strife and Aeris get here, do our part, and then trust in the Boss to take care of the rest."

"So," Reno replied, still unconvinced, "business as usual?"

"Yeah," Rude answered, following behind Tseng as the other Turk left to find a stiff drink to calm his nerves,

"Business as usual."

* * *

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**A/N:** Wow, that chapter came out much easier than I thought it would. Good times. Hope you guys all enjoyed it, and **please review.** It makes me feel awesome. Thanks to all of you fantastic folks who have reviewed so far; your feedback is highly appreciated.

See you next chapter, as we begin the long downward spiral!


	8. Ensnared

**Anabasis**

**Chapter 8: **Ensnared

* * *

Aeris watched Sephiroth carefully after she had finished explaining just who and what Jenova really was, feeling herself get more and more tense as she waited for some kind of reaction. She expected him to be disbelieving, unnerved, stoically accepting or maybe even outraged, but she hadn't expected him to be totally unmoved by the whole thing.

"That's all there is to it?" he asked after a few moments, and Aeris could only stare at him blankly, her mouth open slightly.

"You're not surprised by that?" she pressed. "Not even a little?"

Sephiroth shook his head negatively, giving a small chuckle at her reaction to his non-reaction.

"I'd always assumed there was something odd about the infusions they gave us SOLDIERs," he explained. "We aren't exactly what you would call 'normal', after all. And now that I can put a name to that voice, it should be that much easier to keep it in check."

"Maybe so," Aeris conceded after a moment, "but all the same, don't get cocky. Jenova was an expert at using the Cetra's emotions to put them in vulnerable positions; I'm sure once she realizes she can't get at you through your head, she's going to start aiming for your heart."

Sephiroth smiled confidently before turning around, beginning to walk outside to where Cloud was finishing up breakfast as Aeris quickly fell in step beside him.

"I'm sure Jenova will find," he said, "that my heart is more than capable of defending itself."

The pair sat down around the small brushfire Cloud had coaxed from what scraps of twig and wood he had found in the supply pack, helping themselves to some eggs, a few strips of meat jerky and some carefully-measured cups of water. Cloud took a moment to look back and forth from Aeris to Sephiroth, and once he was sure that their argument had resolved itself, he spoke.

"We're gonna have to cut through some of the city to get to the port," he said. "Do you think we can make it that far without getting smoked out?"

"I had no problem staying incognito when I got here—" Sephiroth began, only for Cloud to cut him off sharply.

"Until your cover got blown by some random barfly, General," the blue-eyed SOLDIER countered. "Do you at least have a contingency plan if something like that happens again?"

Sephiroth skewered a piece of egg with a little more strength than was necessary, his eyes flaring slightly at the criticism.

"You're the tactician here, Strife," he answered tersely. "Isn't thinking up contingency plans your job?"

"Regardless of what plans we do or don't have," Aeris broke in calmly but firmly as she felt the tension rising between the two warriors, "the end result is going to be the same. The only way off of this continent available to us is by boat, and Wutai only has one port. Either we make it there without getting caught or we don't; there's nowhere else we can turn to for asylum."

Cloud shrugged, biting off a piece of jerky.

"Tha'sa goo' point," he spoke from around the mouthful, waiting until he'd finished the bite to continue. "If it's just the port or bust, I guess we'd better pray no one recognizes us."

"If Sephiroth could get around without being noticed," Aeris said with a smirk and a short jab of her fork towards the tall, silver-haired, green-eyed General, "I'm sure we'll be fine."

"Classy," Sephiroth parried dryly, finishing his breakfast and getting quickly to his feet. "Just for that, I'm taking the faster Chocobo."

"Fine by me," the Cetra replied airily, her smirk not faltering in the slightest. "It makes more sense for me to ride with Cloud, anyway; I need to get him up to speed on Jenova, too."

"The Project?" Cloud asked, raising an eyebrow, wondering how Aeris could know about that, but she shook her head.

"Not exactly," she said. "It's kind of a weird story, though, I'll warn you right now."

Cloud just chuckled, walking over to and hopping astride the other Chocobo as Aeris followed suit.

"I've probably heard stranger," he said, gripping the reins and sharply tapping his heel against the Chocobo's flank. The large bird squawked indignantly before taking off in a speedy trot, and Aeris began re-telling Jenova's tale as the travelers rode ever closer to Wutai's port. And when they reached it, they would finally have their passage to freedom from Shinra Corporation.

* * *

"Okay, so let me make sure I have this right," Cloud spoke slowly, his eyes closed in concentration as he tried to wrap his mind around what he'd just been told. "Jenova was an alien who fell in a meteorite out of the sky, infiltrated the Cetra people by shapeshifting and then proceeded to butcher them almost completely, except for your mother."

Aeris gave a quick nod.

"Exactly."

"And the cells that Hojo drew out of this alien are what he used to fuel the Jenova Project, cells that are constantly trying to reunite and may be capable of controlling my mind and my actions?"

"That's about it, yes," the Cetra affirmed, and Cloud sighed.

"Because worrying about some mass-murdering alien psycho mind-controlling me is just what I need right now," the SOLDIER deadpanned, and Aeris laughed. "Still," Cloud continued, more optimistically, "I guess it's better that I know, instead of being caught completely unawares."

Aeris looked from Cloud to Sephiroth and back to Cloud, mystified by the casualness with which both men treated their situation.

"What is it with you guys?" she asked. "I expected at least one of you to be flipping out and raving about how this can't possibly be true, or even happening, or something like that. But the two of you are just taking me at my word, like all I told you was that the sky was blue!"

Cloud just chuckled at the Cetra's disbelief.

"Well, to be fair," he said, "there's really no reason to think you're lying, and denial does no one any good. That, and it's still way too early in the morning to rant and rave about something. I try to keep my bouts of insanity under wraps until at least after four o'clock in the afternoon."

"Something for which all of us in the division were incredibly thankful," Sephiroth added with a smirk, and Aeris just shook her head in silence. She assumed that black humor was the only thing the SOLDIERs had to keep the demons of wartime at bay, but it was still something she would never fully understand.

"So, General," Cloud spoke up again after a few moments, "if you don't mind my asking, have you ever gotten taken over by Jenova?"

Sephiroth was quiet for a solid minute, every second that ticked by putting Aeris further on edge that he would have some kind of relapse into pointless, self-serving guilt. When he finally spoke, though, Aeris was relieved to hear that her friend's voice was normal, if a bit more serious than usual.

"Once," Sephiroth said. "It felt like getting kicked out of your own body, like a second brain completely replaced your own and started commanding all of your muscles to follow its orders."

"And how did you stop it?"

"… I almost didn't," Sephiroth admitted after a few more beats of silence, his head dropping slightly. "It took every ounce of my strength, and even then it was a close thing. And if it hadn't been Aeris' life that was at risk, I don't know if I could have beaten the parasite, period. The only advice I can give you is to stay alert at all times, Strife," the General finished. "Jenova strikes very quickly, and doesn't take kindly to the concept of defeat."

Cloud nodded gravely, knowing full well that anything which had managed to unsettle Sephiroth to such a degree was an enemy that required nothing less than the strictest of vigilance to guard against it.

Aeris felt the determination of the two soldiers hanging thick in the air like a suffocating shroud, and knew she had to dispel it somehow or the rest of the ride into Wutai was going to be miserably tense.

"So, Cloud," she asked, "this girlfriend of yours; what's she like?"

The effect the question had on Cloud's demeanor could be seen instantly: his shoulders slumped slightly before tensing up again, while his eyebrows furrowed into a halfhearted scowl at the same time.

"I don't know if I can still call her my girlfriend, really," the SOLDIER ruminated. "It's been eight years since I last saw her, and who knows what's happened during that time."

Aeris set her mouth in a frown, bound and determined not to let Cloud off that easy.

"Well," she said, trying a different tack, "putting the uncertain nature of your relationship aside, does this person at least have a name?"

"Yeah," Cloud answered. "Tifa. Tifa Lockhart."

Aeris' frown deepened as she heard the name, sensing something familiar in it and wondering where exactly she might have heard it before. A minute later, the Cetra had finally pinpointed the memory in question and couldn't hold back a quiet gasp.

"What is it?" Cloud asked, taking his attention away from the desert in front of him to look back over his shoulder at Aeris. "What's wrong?"

"Does this Tifa Lockhart happen to have long, black hair and dark, red-ish eyes?"

"Yeah," Cloud said again, but this time his voice lacked any melancholy, and was instead sharp and focused. "She does. How the hell did you know that?"

"Because…" Aeris began, before trailing off and wondering just how to say what she knew. "Because when I broke out of Shinra's labs a few months ago, two of the Turks tried to stop me from escaping. One of them was Tseng, who had been something of a guardian to me for a while after Sephiroth left for Wutai, and the other was a young woman about our age who I'd never seen before then. I convinced them to let me go, and one of the last things I heard as I left was Tseng addressing her by her name.

"Her name was Tifa."

Cloud didn't say anything for several moments, turning back around and tightening his grip on the Chocobo's reins. When he finally did open his mouth, the SOLDIER hesitated and closed it a few seconds later.

The rest of the way into Wutai, Cloud didn't say a word.

* * *

As the sun finally finished sinking below the horizon, Tseng let out a breath he'd been holding for what felt like forever and flipped his communicator on.

"Reno, are you in position?"

"Yessir," the reply came crackling back through the speaker on Tseng's end. "Perfect view of the gate they'll have to come through; I'll have my sights on 'em from the second they walk into the city."

"Good. And just to be sure, Reno," the Turk's leader said, "are you sober enough to make the shot from there, if it comes to that?"

The other Turk barked out a laugh at that.

"Are you kiddin' me, boss?" Reno asked, mock hurt in his voice. "Have I _ever_ missed a shot before in my life, drunk or sober?"

Tseng thought about it for a moment, and then realized with a chagrined sigh that Reno had just made a valid point.

"No, Reno," he admitted, "you haven't."

"Damn right I haven't. So just chill out, boss, and this whole thing'll be done before you know it."

"Would you two mind keeping the chattering to a minimum?" Rude's deep voice broke in, more than slightly annoyed. "You might both be standing at the finish line already, but I need to stay focused if I'm going to tail these guys without getting sniffed out."

"Speak of the devil," Reno said, all of the humor gone from his voice as he switched into his mission persona in an instant. "Looks like our friends just made their entrance at the gate. Rude, they'll be passing by you in about thirty seconds."

"Let's make this as simple and as silent as possible," Tseng said evenly, drawing the silenced pistol from inside of his jacket and holding it down at his side. "I'm cutting the radio line completely from here on out."

The trio of Turks waited silently as their quarry moved through the streets of Wutai, with Sephiroth, Cloud and Aeris keeping to the relatively empty side-streets as often as possible. The night was a blessing to the Shinra soldiers, as the long shadows cast by the buildings allowed Rude to hide his otherwise massive frame with no difficulty. Reno kept his sights trained on the one he was sure was Cloud Strife, although the heavy cloaks that the three travelers were wearing made it hard to be sure who was who. It was only their manner of moving that made it certain the Turks were targeting the right people; the SOLDIERs moved with a practiced gait and speed that only a military man would have honed to the point of flawlessness.

When the three of them split up unexpectedly, Reno was sorely tempted to break radio silence with a few choice curses. The Turks knew that their targets would have to meet up again at some point, though, and they would be waiting for them no matter where that meeting place was.

And sure enough, the separate routes that Strife, Sephiroth and Aeris were taking began to converge a few minutes later. As Reno realized what they were planning to do, he opened his mouth to warn Tseng, only to have his leader preempt him.

"I know, Reno," the other Turk's calm voice said over the connection. "Just keep your sights on Sephiroth, and Rude will handle Cloud."

Reno grit his teeth and tensed his finger around the metal behind the rifle's trigger, barely repressing his instinct to just blow his target's head off. Instead, the Turk forced himself to do nothing but keep his the General in his sights as Strife and Sephiroth advanced with the synchronization that could only belong to two comrades who had weathered countless battles together. Even Reno had to admit that the degree to which they could anticipate the others' next move was eerily close to perfect.

Tseng could feel Sephiroth and Strife as they walked towards his position with unchanging speed, clearly in no mood to rush into a showdown. Their poise and thinly veiled killing instinct was palpable even from where Tseng was standing, but the Turk's eyes were focused solely on the person walking towards him, down the very street he was facing. Aeris had removed the hood of her cloak from her face, bringing her arresting green eyes fully into the moonlight. As she finally walked close enough to be heard, the last of the Cetra spoke.

"Hello, Tseng," she said simply, her voice neutral even though a small smile played around the edges of her lips. "Long time, no see."

"Miss Gainsborough," the Turk replied with a short nod, coldly squelching the protective emotions that welled up within him at the sight of her. "You look well."

Neither of them so much as twitched following their short greetings, and the next thing Tseng felt was the cold sensation that came with steel being pressed against the jugular vein in his neck.

"General Sephiroth," the head Turk said as evenly as ever, not moving his eyes from Aeris'. "It's not like you to hesitate on a killing blow."

"And it's not like you to be so sloppy, Tseng," came Sephiroth's equally toneless reply. "Strife already has Rude disarmed, and should be holding Rude's own pistol against his head as we speak."

"And Reno is pointing a high-caliber sniper rifle's barrel right at your head, General," Tseng replied, utterly unfazed by Rude being outflanked. "I would say that balances the scales quite nicely, wouldn't you?"

Sephiroth was silent; he'd accepted the possibility of a no-win situation unfolding, but that didn't make it sting any less now that it was staring him in the face.

"Here's how this is going to work, General," Tseng continued. His pistol remained down at his side, but was ready to fire if it came to that. "You're going to remove the blade of your sword from my neck, and Cloud is going to give Rude back his gun. Once I can see Rude with my eyes and can confirm that he is no longer in danger, Reno will stand down."

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed, the SOLDIER waiting for the explanation of the catch that didn't come.

"What then?" Sephiroth asked, impatience finally creeping into his voice. You expect us to just follow you back to Midgar without a fight?"

"No, Sephiroth," the Turk replied, "not at all. After this mess is cleaned up, you, Cloud and Aeris are going to be escorted to Wutai's highest-security prison, where you will be held until your final fate is decided by Lord Godo Kisaragi."

"And how are you going to make us go along with that?" Cloud's voice broke in, as the other SOLDIER walked slowly out of the nearby shadows with Rude in front of him, a gun resting at the large Turk's temple. Cloud lowered the weapon and gave it back to Rude, moving one of his free hands to the hilt of his Buster Sword immediately afterward.

"Do you seriously think that Reno could take both me and Sephiroth out before we killed one or both of you? You need an army at your back if you want to walk out of here alive, Tseng."

"Is that so, Cloud?" the Turk's leader said, an amused light glinting in his dark eyes. "Well then, it's very fortunate that we brought one of those along as backup, isn't it?"

Tseng snapped his fingers, and on that cue a whole platoon of elite Wutai ninja leapt out from the shadows and alleys. They'd hidden themselves there hours beforehand, and stayed perfectly hidden even as Sephiroth and his companions had moved through the city's streets. The two SOLDIERs were forced to back down as they felt numerous steel points and edges resting against their own skin, and Aeris tensed up considerably as a long knife came to rest with its point just above her heart.

Cloud felt his anger spike at being so completely caught off-guard, but he kept himself just calm enough to speak clearly.

"Tseng," he said with more menace in his voice than even Sephiroth had ever heard before, "where the hell is Tifa? Why didn't you tell me she was a Turk!?"

Tseng sighed, knowing that revealing Tifa's location would jeopardize the whole operation. Motioning with his eyes to one of the ninja keeping Cloud immobilized, the Turk didn't even blink as Cloud was quickly neck-chopped into unconsciousness. Sephiroth's anger was visible in his eyes, but he was also smart enough to know that this was a battle he couldn't win, and he stayed still.

"Get them out of here," Tseng said as stoically as he could. "I'll go deliver the report to Lord Kisaragi myself right now."

The ninja obeyed without making a sound, and the three captives were led off towards the prison that would hold them until Rufus came to bail them out.

Tseng just hoped that his boss didn't take too long: he knew that Godo's slippery advisor was up to something—he could sense it in his bones, and it made the veteran Turk feel incredibly uneasy.

And the look Aeris gave him as she was led away cut deeper than any knife could have; in the face of such hurt and disappointment at his actions, the Turk could only bow his head in shame and hope to be forgiven when the dust settled.

* * *

………

…………

**A/N:** First off, my most sincere apologies for this chapter taking so ridiculously long to post. I had crazy writer's block, which then combined with exams, and the delay just kept snowballing. To the few and the proud that are still following this story, sorry to have kept you waiting.

That said, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. **Reviews** are, as always, immensely appreciated; thanks go out to everyone who's reviewed so far, you all rock. And to those who were hoping to maybe see Yuffie pop up in this chapter, I was thinking about it, but then decided it worked better if she stayed out of the picture for now. But fear not, she'll make her entrance soon enough.

Thanks again for reading this far, and I'll see you at the next chapter!


	9. The Calamity

**Anabasis**

**Chapter 9:** The Calamity

* * *

Cloud woke up slowly. The first thing he noticed was that he was in a dark room: the air was damp and heavy, the smell distressingly familiar, and a row of iron bars sat not too far in front of him. He was in the Daikangoku, the highest-security prison in Wutai. It wasn't the first time he'd sat in a cell here, but Cloud felt no sense of attachment or comfort.

Here, the only things that lingered in the shadows were memories; memories he would rather forget completely.

"It seems as though they remembered the cells we were in last time," Sephiroth's voice spoke out through the darkness. "Who do you think was the nostalgic one?"

"Beats me," Cloud said with a shrug, blinking a few times to jumpstart his eyes as they got used to the lack of light. "What do you think they did with Aeris? I can't see her anywhere."

Sephiroth leaned back against the wall of his cell and sighed, tilting his head up to where he could vaguely sense the Cetra's aura seeping through the layers of earth to reach him.

"No doubt Lord Kisaragi is keeping his most precious hostage somewhere safer than down here," he commented coolly. "We're valuable to Shinra, but in the end our deaths would be more useful to Wutai than keeping us alive. Aeris, however, is a different story altogether."

Cloud arched an eyebrow at his comrade's easy tone, surprised to hear Sephiroth so unmoved even by this trap they'd managed to blunder into.

"You think the Turks will watch over her?" he asked, and he heard the shoulder plates of Sephiroth's armor shift as the General shrugged.

"It would certainly be in their best interests to do so," Sephiroth answered after a moment. "But regardless, we can't let ourselves be distracted by her situation; Aeris is strong, Strife. Stronger than many people would give her credit for at first glance. She can handle herself.

"Right now, what we need to figure out is how to get out of here in one piece. Once that's taken care of, I'm going to have a nice long talk with Tseng about where exactly he stands in all of this."

"That sounds like a solid plan, General," a new man's voice broke in from off to the side, bringing the light of several torches along with it. "But of course, you know as well as any soldier that a plan is useless unless it can be executed. Do you honestly think we're about to let you waltz out of here, Sephiroth; Cloud?"

The two captives looked over towards the light to see a man they both knew well standing there, flanked by a small group of ninja holding torches. He was tall and muscled, but slight of figure and clearly reliant more on his natural speed than brute force. His unassuming figure only served to belie the look of authority in his dark eyes, forged by countless battles fought, won and lost.

"Lord Kumatora," Sephiroth greeted the Wutai soldier, inclining his head in a rare show of visible respect for one of his most tenacious opponents. "It's been a long time."

"Indeed it has been, General," Kumatora replied easily, running a hand through his short, spiky brown hair as he spoke, his voice heavy. "And although I must confess that it was my sincere desire we would never meet again, I regret that this reunion, such as it is, must be held in these squalid quarters."

Cloud huffed and finally broke his silence, his faintly glowing blue eyes still sharp.

"Enough with the pleasantries," he said lowly. "What are you doing down here, if you clearly have no intention of letting us go?"

Kumatora chuckled, the scar running down the right side of his face and over his eye contorting as he laughed.

"Still as impatient as ever, I see," the Wutai soldier said. "How many times will that have to cost you before you grow out of it, Cloud? But to answer your question, I just wanted to make sure I was down here to take up guard duty before Koshinuke grabbed it instead. If he had, I suspect the two of you would be dead already."

Cloud's anger relented at the explanation, but it was still far from extinguished. Koshinuke was a cowardly piece of shit, and the wound Cloud still carried in his shoulder from when he'd almost been backstabbed straight through the heart was lasting proof of how little the Wutai commander cared about honor. But the SOLDIER's mood was still black after hearing that Tifa had joined the Turks, and nothing about the current situation was doing anything to calm him down.

"Strife," Sephiroth's even voice sliced coldly through the troubled soldier's thoughts, "pull yourself together. If you want to pointlessly brood over what's troubling you, do it when you have the time to waste. As long as we still need to get out of here, however, that should be the one and only thing on your mind. Is that in any way unclear?"

Cloud was immobile at the words for a few heartbeats, before his resistance broke down and he sighed, slumping like his spine had been shattered into countless fragments.

"No, sir," he said hollowly. "I understand."

Kumatora was surprised by the defeated look on Cloud's face, but hid it and said nothing. He'd clashed with Sephiroth and his fierce subordinate more times than anyone else in Wutai's army, and had the scars to show for it, but not once had he ever seen Cloud look so beaten. A quick glance over to Sephiroth yielded nothing in the way of answers, so Kumatora gave up and turned to his ninja companions.

"Give us a minute, will you?" he said evenly, and the troops nodded in unison before turning and walking from the room, leaving one of their torches with their commander. Before they'd exited completely, Kumatora gave his soldiers one more order.

"If you see or hear anyone eavesdropping," he said coldly, "bring me their heads."

The ninja melted into the shadows without a word, leaving the Wutai general alone with his old rivals.

"What's this about?" Sephiroth asked after a moment, confused as to why a soldier of Wutai would be so dead-set on making sure he could share a few words in private with his sworn enemies. Kumatora sighed, suddenly looking decades older in the dim light of the lone flame.

"Something is rotten here, Sephiroth," he said after a moment, his weariness creeping into his tone. "I can't pin it down, but my instincts are howling at me that something is off and they've never been wrong yet. If I had to guess, it has something to do with Lord Kisaragi's new advisor. My scars ache every time I look at her, and that hasn't ever happened before. Not even when I fought you two. There's something unnatural about that woman, I know it—!"

Kumatora's words were cut off suddenly by a sharp gasp as pain spiked through the soldier's nerves. Looking down, he saw an inhuman claw made of some substance he couldn't recognize impaling his chest, already drenched in blackened blood.

"And that woman would very much appreciate you keeping your suspicions to yourself, Lord Kumatora," the serpentine voice of Godo Kisaragi's advisor whispered into Kumatora's ear as he coughed and spat up a spurt of blood, before the claw was retracted. The soldier quickly fell to the ground in a limp heap, blood continuing to flow from his gaping wound.

Sephiroth and Cloud could only stand and watch in mute horror as the woman who had just assassinated Kumatora walked slowly towards them, the claw her arm had been just seconds before transforming back into a human-looking arm with a sickening _squelch_. The freshly-shed blood clung to the transformed limb, and the woman took a few moments to lick some of it off before giving a satisfied sigh and looking once again at the captives.

"What… what the fuck _are_ you?" Cloud managed to force out over his shock and nausea, eyes glimmering with fear now. The woman looked at him and smiled, her own brown eyes shining with unnatural bloodlust and insanity as her oddly-sharp teeth glinted in the faint light. Her long black hair framed her face in disheveled bangs, and both of the SOLDIERs could tell in an instant that this… thing, whatever she was, was like nothing either of them had ever faced before.

"You honestly don't know me, boy?" she crooned at last, advancing closer and closer to Cloud. He tried to back away, but the woman raised her hand and suddenly he felt himself rooted to the spot by terrible agony, feeling like every ounce of his blood was on fire.

"Don't try to run from me," the woman chided, her voice an unhinged combination of predatory and lustful. "You can't escape me, Cloud Strife. You cannot hope to escape yourself, after all. It is pointless."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Cloud forced out through his pain, the question only serving to make the woman's smile widen.

"So you're going to keep acting coy, are you?" she asked, not even pausing as she reached the bars of his cell. She simply walked through the gaps between them, her body contorting to slip through the barrier without effort. "Very well, then," the woman continued, finally stopping as she came to within arms-length of the paralyzed SOLDIER.

"Allow me to show you who I am, Cloud Strife."

Cloud hadn't drawn another breath before all of the air was driven from his lungs in an instant of blinding agony. The woman's hand had lashed out and penetrated his abdomen faster than any bullet could have, burying itself there. Before Cloud had any time to process what had happened to him, though, he felt the hand shift shape, becoming a tangle of small tentacles that entwined themselves with his internal organs.

"I am your patron saint, young one," the woman whispered into the blue-eyed warrior's ear as he struggled to breathe. Her facial features began to change before his eyes, the dark hair becoming long and white as her face became angular, the skin ashen-gray and her eyes a deep, bloody red.

"I am your goddess. I am Jenova."

Sephiroth had stood motionless as the unearthly woman had attacked his comrade, but the mention of her name shocked him back to himself and he spoke.

"What are you doing to him, you monster?" he said as evenly as he could, struggling to maintain his composure in the face of the alien. He could feel the Jenova cells in his body responding to their mistress' call, burning with the instinctual drive to reunite with their source.

Jenova looked over at Sephiroth and smiled; not the predatory smile she'd shown to Cloud, but a softer one, almost perversely maternal.

"I'm simply injecting more of my cells into his body," the alien answered. "Don't worry; he won't die. I just simply can't be having my pawns acting according to their own wills, now can I? Just be a good soldier and wait for a moment; you'll get your turn shortly."

Sephiroth's mind was racing even if his body was sluggish, and his eyes soon widened in horror at what he knew Jenova's true target would be.

"Where is Aeris?" he said with sharp defiance. "What have you done to her?"

Jenova said nothing at first, pulling her tentacled limb out of Cloud and reforming it into a normal arm as Cloud slumped to the floor, unconscious. The wound Jenova had given him was healed, but it was clear that irreparable damage had already been done.

"The Cetra?" she asked at last, voice gloating. "Nothing yet, my puppet. Rest assured, I'm going to tear her into countless bloody shreds in the end, but she has a role to play yet. If you do as you're told, maybe I'll let you be the one who ravages her when the time comes to end her pathetic life."

Sephiroth said nothing, his eyes smoldering with pure hatred and murderous rage. Jenova's smile just widened, changing from maternal back to the psychotic grin she'd been wearing as she butchered Kumatora and attacked Cloud.

"That's the look I've been waiting to see on your face again, Sephiroth," Jenova hummed, her eyes gleaming with amusement. "I'll strip you of everything you hold dear, until your hatred is all you have left to cling to. You are my finest scion, and I'm not about to let as pure a killer as you have his edge dulled by something as trivial and pointless as love or affection."

Jenova's arm shifted into a spear-like tentacle and shot out at Sephiroth from across the room, but the SOLDIER was ready for it and dodged to the side. He grabbed it firmly as it passed by, before using his considerable strength to tear the top part of the limb clean off. But Jenova seemed completely unfazed by her wound, and by the time Sephiroth had figured out why, it was too late. The flesh in his hands writhed on its own and twitched sharply, reforming its surface into countless tiny spikes that sunk into the flesh of Sephiroth's forearm and began to pulse. And as they did so, they sent more and more of Jenova's cells into the SOLDIER's body.

His will broke and he screamed as the pain became too much to bear, collapsing to the ground and quickly passing into unconsciousness as Jenova walked out of the room, returning her appearance to that of Godo Kisaragi's aide. The blackness clouded Sephiroth's vision at last and he gave into it, but not before a single word passed his lips in urgent warning.

"Aeris…"

* * *

The last of the Cetra bolted to her feet with a stifled gasp, struggling to catch her breath as she looked frantically around the room. Once she was sure she was alone, Aeris forced herself to calm down, but the unease in her stomach refused to go away. She had been meditating, trying to commune with the Planet, when that sickening sensation her mother had always warned her about flooded up into her awareness with frightening clarity. That feeling of an unnatural toxin poisoning the flow of the Planet's energy, devouring and destroying everything it touched.

The Calamity. Jenova.

She was here.

"Tseng!" Aeris called out, desperate for any kind of company. "Tseng!"

The Turk opened the room's only door and looked in, his features tense and alert as his other hand rested ready on the gun at his hip.

"Yes, Miss Gainsborough?" he asked tensely. "Is everything all right?"

Aeris sighed and walked over to the small bed she'd been given in the room, which was really nothing more than a particularly well-furnished cell.

"I'm not sure," she said, her voice wavering slightly with an edge of fear. "And please, just call me Aeris," she added with a small smile, trying to put both the Turk and herself at ease. "I'm not as old as my mother; not yet, anyway."

Tseng offered nothing more than a minute shrug at the words, stepping fully into the room and giving it a careful sweep with his trained eyes.

"What did you mean when you said you weren't sure if everything was all right?" the Turk asked seriously after a few moments of silence, and the Cetra suddenly became very intent on smoothing out the folds of her dirt-stained skirt.

"Tell me honestly," she said at last, her voice less frantic than it had been when she'd called out to him, but still strained. "Jenova… is she still locked up in Shinra's laboratories? And if you tell me I'm not party to classified information," Aeris added pointedly as Tseng made to reply, "so help me I will knock your teeth out. That thing is after me, and if she ever finds me—"

Tseng could see that his charge was becoming panicked, and resolved to do something about it. Walking over to the end of the bed, he took a seat next to Aeris and placed his hand on her shoulder in a silent gesture of support. She calmed down somewhat at the contact, and Tseng allowed himself a small, relieved smile; it had always upset him to see someone as innocent as Aeris distraught.

"I wasn't going to withhold anything from you, Aeris," he said quietly after a few more moments of silence had passed between them. "You have more of a right to know about Jenova than anyone else on the Planet, after all. You don't have to worry about it hunting you down, though; what little remains of it is still locked away in the back of the big _mako_ reactor in Nibelheim. I doubt Hojo would let his prized specimen go free, either."

"No," Aeris said, bitterness in her voice, "you're right. Hojo likes to keep his specimens locked up nice and tight, that's for sure."

Tseng winced, but the Cetra didn't seem to notice. He doubted she would ever put that part of her past behind her, and to be honest he didn't expect her to. It would stay in some corner of her heart forever, festering. Why the President had ever hired that sociopathic bastard of a scientist to work for him, Tseng would never know.

A knock at the door yanked the Turk abruptly out of his thoughts, and he rose cautiously to his feet.

"Who is it?" he called out, back on alert once more.

"Lord Kisaragi's aide, sir," a feminine voice replied from the other side of the door. "My lord requests your presence in the throne room, along with the rest of the Turks."

"And the reason for the summons?" Tseng prodded, remembering Rude and Reno's words of caution from earlier. He wasn't too trusting of Kisaragi's right hand either, and wasn't about to leave Aeris unguarded without a very good reason for doing so.

"There's been an attack on the two SOLDIER prisoners down in the Daikangoku, sir," came the reply, and Aeris was on her feet immediately. "Their guard detail was completely eradicated by an unknown assailant, including Lord General Kumatora. Lord Kisaragi requests that you take the rest of the Turks over to investigate the scene. Rude and Reno are already in the throne room, awaiting your arrival."

Tseng cursed harshly under his breath, hastily weighing his options. Any attack on Cloud and Sephiroth was a major issue that could threaten to upset the entire plan Rufus was engineering. But at the same time, leaving Aeris alone was also a huge risk…

"Go," he heard Aeris say softly, but insistently. "Please. If something happened to Sephiroth or Cloud, you have to go help them. Don't worry about me; I'll be fine here on my own."

Tseng hesitated for a moment, but cracked a heartbeat later and sighed.

"Very well," he said evenly, before turning and walking from the room without looking back. Aeris didn't mind; she knew he'd done it to keep from having second thoughts about the decision. For her part, Aeris sank back down onto her bed and looked up at the plain ceiling, her eyes drifting closed as she tried to keep herself together. Her life had been completely upturned in the past few days, and now she was languishing away in a cell in Wutai, far removed from any place she'd ever known.

And Sephiroth had been attacked.

She didn't want to think it was related to the surge of disgusting, poisonous energy she'd felt earlier, but Aeris knew full well that to ignore the possibility was dangerous denial.

"Quite right you are, young one."

The Cetra's eyes snapped open at the words, but before she could sit up a hand had pressed against her midsection, applying more than enough pressure to keep her pinned.

"Please, don't bother getting up on my account," the smooth, feminine voice continued, and Aeris looked over to see with shock that it was Lord Kisaragi's aide—and the arm she was using to pin her down was much longer and stronger than it had any right to be.

"Who… who are you?" the Cetra forced out, provoking a smugly amused chuckle from the woman above her, who had now walked up to the bedside to gloat down at her captive.

"I suppose you wouldn't remember me after all, Aeris," she said, "considering that I'd been dormant inside the Northern Crater for about two thousand years by the time you were regrettably born. I'd assumed the rest of your race would wither and die without reproducing as humans spread like the plague, but I was wrong."

Aeris' eyes widened slowly in horror as she realized just who was talking to her. The woman gave a huge, bloodthirsty grin as her features began to shift, her dark hair becoming white while her skin turned ashen-gray and her eyes became a dark, bloody red.

"Jenova…" the terrified Cetra gasped, before shaking her head frantically, as if to wish away the demon that had appeared in front of her. "No, no, this isn't possible," Aeris insisted. "You're in stasis in Nibelheim, Tseng told me so! You can't be here!"

A cruel light sprang into Jenova's eyes at the declaration. Aeris felt a searing burn in her heart as she realized her grave mistake, but it was too late to retract her words.

"So, Nibelheim is where they're keeping the rest of me?" she said. "Thank you for the information, Cetra. In exchange, I suppose I can at least tell you how it is I came to be here, since you seem to believe that it's impossible. I assume your mother told you about me, did she not?" Aeris nodded mutely, despair choking words off in her throat.

"Good," the alien continued. "Then you must know about the Reunion phenomenon. Every one of my cells is connected, barring being placed in some kind of special containment like Hojo's accursed stasis. And you must also know that the elite members of the SOLDIER program were all injected with my cells to enhance their strength, like your friend Sephiroth and his fellow SOLDIER Cloud Strife.

"My cells ran through the body and blood of every SOLDIER, Aeris. And when these warriors died here in Wutai, when their blood spilled into the Planet, what do you think spilled out with it? Once the War had gone on long enough, my free cells were great enough in number that they could reconvene to establish a sentient, independent organism. That which you see before you now.

"After my rebirth, it was a simple matter to take the shape of a Wutai woman and work my way up through the ranks, all the way to Godo Kisaragi's right hand."

Aeris looked up at her mortal enemy unblinking, resolved not to give Jenova the satisfaction of showing her any more fear.

"So what does any of that have to do with me, or Sephiroth or Cloud?" she spat harshly. "Why did you attack them? And what do you want with me?"

Jenova laughed, changing her fingers into claws just long enough to stab Aeris in the chest before she turned around and walked towards the door.

"Don't be afraid, little Cetra," she said as Aeris scrambled to heal her wound, "that won't kill you; not even close. Think of it as a warning, nothing more. And as to what I want from the three of you, puppets and pawns all have their roles to play. That's all you need to know."

"He's not your pawn, you bitch!" Aeris snarled as her rage and despair finally overwhelmed her. "He won't follow your orders!"

Jenova's laughter continued to reach her ears from the doorway, and the alien spoke one final parting shot.

"He's beyond your salvation, Cetra. He's been beyond it since the day I entered his bloodstream, and now it's time to pay the piper."

The door slammed shut and Aeris let out a stricken scream, getting nothing in return but a twisted echo as it bounced off of the room's walls. Jenova had returned, and the Calamity had done something terrible to Sephiroth and Cloud. The last of the Cetra felt beaten and she felt hopeless, but worst of all, she felt alone. Forsaken.

_My child,_ a gentle, comforting voice spoke to Aeris from deep within her mind, _you are never alone. We are always with you, in suffering as well as in joy. Call upon us, and we will help you in whatever way we can._

"Then please, tell me," she said as calmly as she could, ignoring the small tears trickling down her face. "Tell me what I should do. How can I ever fix this?"

The Planet's voice was silent for a few moments, and when it spoke again it was gravely serious.

_Jenova has strengthened her hold on your friends considerably, child,_ it said. _There is a way to purge them of her influence, but it carries with it a terrible risk. If you do not succeed in time, they could become completely overwhelmed by the will of Jenova, cut off from their former selves forever. And even if you succeed…_

The voice trailed off, and Aeris' eyes narrowed in irritation.

"What happens if I succeed?" she prompted, not liking the implication of the Planet's sudden silence.

_Even if you succeed,_ the voice continued after a moment, _there is still a chance that the purification process will kill them both._

Aeris took in a deep, ragged breath at the revelation, steeling herself for what was to come.

"What do I have to do?"

_Go to where the energy of the Planet is strongest in this kingdom,_ the voice counseled, _and there, make a plea for its assistance. If your heart is strong enough, you may be able to call out the great Weapons. Only they can help you purge the stain of Jenova from this place forever. But they are wild things, and require great will to be controlled._

"I can take that risk," Aeris said firmly. "Just tell me where I need to go, and I'll handle the rest."

The voice seemed to chuckle warmly at her stubbornness before it spoke again.

_Look to your instincts, my child, _it said, _and they will guide you true._

Aeris nodded and exhaled slowly as the connection faded away, coming back to herself. There was no time to waste lamenting anything, not with Sephiroth and Cloud's lives hanging in the balance. She had to find these 'Weapons' and convince them to help her, or the Planet was screwed beyond all hope. And as its last daughter, its last guardian, she couldn't let that happen.

But the first thing was first, Aeris told herself as she got up and walked from the room, being careful not to alert any nearby ninja as she moved. She was going to need Materia, and probably a weapon, if she was going to survive a trek through Wutai's wilderness on her own.

Aeris was so caught up in her own thoughts that she turned into the next hallway without looking to see where she was going, and smacked right into someone walking the opposite way down the corridor.

"Ouch!" came the shout, accompanied by the sound of orbs of Materia clinking down onto the floor. "What gives? Watch where you're goin', lady!"

"I'm sorry!" Aeris said apologetically as she got back up, wincing through the soreness that radiated from where she'd landed on her hip. By the time she remembered that she was supposed to be avoiding any and all contact with the people in the building during her escape attempt, Aeris was already being stared hard in the face by the person she'd bumped into. The other person in question was a girl who looked to be about Aeris' age, if not a bit younger. She had short black hair, and a tomboyishly energetic look in her dark eyes.

"Wait a sec, don't I know you?" she said after a few beats, a faint catlike smile playing around the edges of her lips. Aeris felt her heart clench at the question: if she was reported as having tried to escape, Lord Kisaragi would no doubt double her guard. That would make future attempts impossible, and Aeris couldn't afford that.

"Um… no?" she volunteered, cringing inwardly at how lame it sounded. "I certainly don't know who you are, at any rate."

That seemed to offend the other girl deeply, and her face turned a shade of red that would have been amusing in any other circumstance.

"You… you don't know who I am?" she said lowly, her voice gradually gaining force and volume. "That's unforgivable! I'm the princess Yuffie Kisaragi, the great ninja of Wutai! And one day, after my old man pulls his head out of his ass and acknowledges me as his heir, I'm gonna rule over this whole kingdom!"

"That sounds like a great goal to have," Aeris said warily, more than a little thrown off by the sudden outburst, "and I wish you luck, your Highness. But if you'll excuse me, I have somewhere I really need to be."

The Cetra had gotten no more than a few steps past Yuffie and down the hall when a _kunai_ flew by her, the point of small knife digging itself into the wooden floor just inches from her left foot and sticking there.

"Waaaait a minute," Yuffie's voice spoke out from behind her, "I remember now. You're that 'Aeris' girl, the one the Turks brought here. Aren't you supposed to be a prisoner, or something?"

Aeris froze, her mind racing for some kind of excuse. Finding one she prayed would work, the Cetra drew herself up and turned back around to face Yuffie.

"Yes, I was being held as a hostage," she answered with as much composure and wounded pride as she could muster, "but there was a change of circumstances. The other two people that were brought here just came down with a fatal illness, and your father's aide gave me permission to go out and seek the cure for it.

"The Turks can't leave their posts, after all, and I doubt your father is willing to risk sending any of his own troops out into the wilds on a mission to save two of his worst enemies. So that just leaves me, and I would appreciate it if you'd let me do my job!"

Yuffie was silent for a few tense heartbeats, before she grinned and said the last thing Aeris had been expecting.

"Can you take me with you?"

The Cetra raised her eyebrows at the question in surprise, unable to believe her luck.

"Pardon?"

"I want you to take me with you!" Yuffie repeated, the tone of her voice clearly implying she wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer. "My father almost never lets me get out of the palace; I'm starting to get cabin fever again. And if you're going out on official business, it's the perfect excuse for me to tag along… I can be your guide, or whatever!"

Aeris didn't know whether to laugh or cry tears of joy at her good fortune, so she split the difference and smiled wide.

"Well, what are you waiting for, then?" she asked. "Come on!"

* * *

…

…...

**A/N:** First thing's first. A **thousand apologies** to anyone and everyone who I've kept waiting for so long for this chapter! I had an absolutely crippling case of Writer's Block for the longest time, and then school work started getting serious and kicking my ass and I lost the rhythm of this story almost completely.

But thanks to a superlatively awesome anonymous review I got a few days ago from '**xandria**' I was inspired to really start thinking about it again, and I finally got this chapter finished up. So I hope it's worth it after such a long wait; I tried making it as tense and action-packed as possible without rushing the plot.

I realize looking at the dates now that it's taken me almost an entire semester between updates, and that's absolutely absurd. But I hope you all will do me the favor of **reviewing** all the same; it's a truly awesome feeling to know that people are reading and enjoying your stories. I can't make any promises as to when the next update will be rolling around, but I'm fairly sure it won't take five months again.

Again, I truly hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and thanks for reading this far!


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